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BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 
Family ALCEDINID. 
CERYLE ALCYON (L.). (390.) 
BELTED KINGFISHER. 
This quaint fisherman is an‘early migrant, reaching Minne- 
sota about the first of April. In some springs it has come on 
the 5th of March, (1883), then the 26th, once on the 29th, then 
on the 15th of April, &c. Its autumnal disappearance is quite 
as irregular; in one season going as late as Nov. 3d, in another, 
Dec. 5th, and so on, but usually going about the last of October. 
They mate soon after their arrival, and are soon engaged in 
excavating a hole in the bank of a stream or lake, to the depth 
of about six feet, where they often make a square angle, and 
carry ita foot or twofarther. There they enlarge it somewhat, 
and build in the extremity a nest composed of grasses, leaves 
and feathers. 
This hole and nest is also used as a resting place at night, 
after the young are matured. It is a little remarkable that a 
family reared so associated together, can become completely 
disorganized as soon as the young are fully developed, yet it is 
a patent fact that by the first of September, all relations are 
dissolved, and each individual henceforth fishes alone. 
Nowhere that my investigations have been extended, has 
this curious crank of the bird kingdom, been found absent from 
his chosen haunts at the season of his summer visitations. 
In the proper place I should have said that they lay six pure 
white, nearly spherical eggs, which require sixteen days for 
incubation. 
Their clamatorial rattle, is too familiar to everybody to re- 
quire notice. Like many another good fisherman, ‘‘poor 
Alcie” is often compelled to retire on a light supply of fish 
diet, but it does not take him as long to dry out and get warm 
as it does the others. Ifthe small fry are running lively, his 
stone-like drop from an overhanging limb, is a pretty certain 
antecedent to a rise with a minnow, crosswise in his bill; but 
when he is compelled to wait fifteen, twenty and thirty minutes © 
for a single one to put in an appearance, he is not very certain 
of his game. I have seen them strike half a dozen times before 
securing one. His history would need a volume to half tell it. 
