n8 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



cheerfully to work one day with a spade, attacking 

 the sod above the bank, for the hole started hardly 

 two feet below the top, and somebody had told me 

 the tunnel always ran uphill from the mouth, no 

 doubt for drainage. It did not occur to me that as 

 I dug backward from the entrance, the soil falling 

 down into the exposed shaft, I was constantly 

 blocking up the passage and effectively imprisoning 

 the mother bird, if she chanced to be in there. 

 After about a foot or two I began to look for the 

 nest, but no nest appeared. I toiled on till I must 

 have exposed a trench five feet long. By that time 

 I decided I must surely be close to the end, so I 

 stooped down and carefully poked away the gravel 

 and fallen loam from the tunnel and ran my little 

 hand up it. A second later the gravel -bank re- 

 sounded to a wild yell of pain as I withdrew a torn 

 and bleeding finger. Mother kingfisher was un- 

 doubtedly on the job! By now I was mad, and, 

 seizing my spade, I dug recklessly to expose her. A 

 moment later and she flew up and out with an 

 angry cry, and began to circle around overhead, 

 while in a slight chamber, into which the tunnel 

 enlarged at the end, amid a heaven-smelling mess of 

 disgorged pellets composed of fish-bones, scales, and 

 the like, and half covered with earth dislodged by 

 my spade, were three baby birds, ugly, blinded by 

 the sudden light, half dead with the collapse of their 

 roof. I forgot my injured finger, and was suddenly 

 overcome by a tremendous pity, a wave of penitence. 

 I think I cried, for even as I watched and tried to 

 scoop the fallen dirt away one of the chicks lay over 

 on its side, apparently dead. I left them and the 



