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THE KINGFISHER. 

 (Alcedo ispida.) 



THE Kingfisher is the arch-enemy of the fish, and it is 

 hardly credible that this relatively small bird, should gulp 

 down, as it does, fish as long as your finger, in order to> 

 fill his stomach. It digests very quickly, and spits out 

 the bones, scales, and fins. It watches, from a bough, 

 for the little fish. Where a bush bending over the water 

 undisturbed by the eddy forms a calm mirror, there 

 does this resplendent fish-poacher settle itself on an 

 overhanging bough, to watch motionless and with in- 

 credible tenacity the water and the living things 

 beneath it. If a trout or other small fish, feeling quite 

 safe, comes to the surface, the Kingfisher drops on it 

 like a piece of lead ; it grasps its prey with its sharp 

 beak, and, shaking the water from its plumage, flies 

 back to its perch, gulps down its delicate morsel, and 

 sets itself again to watch. Its colour protects the bird 

 when diving. The underparts are much the same colour 

 as a fallen leaf, and this arouses no suspicion in the 

 fish the back, on the other hand, shines like the blue 

 shimmer of the running stream, and that often protects 

 the bird from the circling Sparrow-hawk. If it comes to 

 a flat shore on the side of a small stream, which offers no 

 overhanging perching place, it settles on a stake or a 

 clod of earth, and now and then hovers over the water, 

 and flutters like a hawk. It is an inconstant bird. It 

 appears, and disappears from a district, and then, 

 perhaps after some years, presents itself again. Its 

 flight is rapid, and it raises its cry, as it goes, " teet." 

 It does harm, but is scarce in Hungary. 



