The Kingfishers' Home Life 



BY WILLIAM L. BAILY 



With photographs from nature by the author 



HOLE in a bank seems a strange place in which to 

 build a nest, but although one may know it to be the 

 home of a Kingfisher, he little imagines the singular 

 course of the passage leading to the room at the 

 other end, and is hardly aware of the six long weeks 

 of faithful care bestowed by the parent birds upon 

 their eggs and family. 

 Early in April we may hear the Kingfisher's voice, sounding like 

 a policeman's rattle as he patrols the stream, and we often see him 

 leaving a favorite limb, where he has been keeping watch for some 

 innocent minnow in the water below. Off he goes in his slaty blue 

 coat, shaking his rattle and showing his top-heavy crest, his 

 abnormal bill and pure white collar. 



The mother bird, as usual with the sex, does most of the work 

 at home. The hole is generally located high up on the bank, is 

 somewhat less than four inches in diameter, and varies from at least 

 five to eight feet in length. It slightly ascends to the dark, myste- 

 rious den at the other end, — dark because the passage generally bends 





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J 



YOUNG KINGFISHERS, TWO DAYS OLD 



once or twice, thereby entirely excluding the light. The roof of the 

 passage is vaulted from end to end, merging into a domed ceiling 

 almost as shapely as that of the Pantheon. Such a home is built 

 to stay, and if undisturbed would endure for years. Two little tracks 



(76) 



