118 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ORNITHOLOGY OF INDIA. 



sighing through the great, gently waving, palm fronds overhead. 

 The sea, blue to a degree unknown to dwellers in temperate 

 climes, stretched away to the horizon a gilttering glass-like 

 sheet, only just where the waters kissed the " silver strand/' they 

 curled up into tiny sleepy wavelets, too full of summer delight 

 to chafe even at the spiky coral, amongst which they crooned 

 and cooed as softly as brooding doves. 



No living thing seemed stirring, not a sail was to be seen, 

 only not a sound disturbed the universal seista ; only up 

 in the palms the wind sang in whispers and the ripples murmured 

 a soft applause, when suddenly, I was almost startled by 

 a sharp little crack, crack, crack, as though some one was strik- 

 ing a plate with a knife handle. I did not move, I was too com- 

 fortable, but I opened my eyes wishing the intruder at Jericho, 

 and there not above a dozen feet from my face was a lovely 

 green and white Kingfisher (H. chloris) perched on a hollow 

 lump of coral intently occupied with a large whelk-like shell, 

 which he held by the lip between his powerful mandibles and 

 battered on the coral with absolutely incredible force. Each 

 time he struck it thrice successively, then put it down, turned 

 it over and over with his bill, scrutinizing it narrowly, to see 

 I suppose if there was a crack anywhere, and finding there was 

 none, again took it up ; I suppose he repeated this half a dozen 

 times, but the shell was too strong for him, and he flew off, utter- 

 ing his characteristic chuckling screech, I do not know how else 

 to describe it, and perched on the end of a palm frond some 20 

 yards away. Presently off he flew and hung for a moment over 

 the water's edge, and then dropped down softly not making a 

 dart head foremost as the custom is, but subsiding softly as one 

 often sees a harrier do. On the beach he kept turning some- 

 thing over and over, jumping up as the ripples rolled in, and 

 dropping again as they retreated till he had gradually worked 

 his prey beyond their reach. Then he busied himself, as it 

 seemed, in fixing what he had got in a convenient position, and 

 then he began hammering at it with his bill. Something 

 however was wrong, for he again began proding at and about it 

 with his bill ; pi-esently he set at it again, and after a minute 

 apparently got on to it, and began for the first time using* feet as 

 well as beak and eating. Then I jumped up, I had not moved 

 hand or foot till then ; he flew off uttering his note of alarm, and 

 I found that he had been at work on a thin-shelled pink bivalve, 

 about the size of a rupee, but more oval, which he had broken 

 in behind the hinge and out of which he had torn part of the 

 Mollusc. 



