THE



Bxncultural /Ifoaga3tne t


BEING THE JOURNAL OF THEv


AVICULTURAL SOCIETY.



VOL. VI. —NO. 66. All rights reserved. APRIL, 1900 .



THE SACRED KINGFISHER.


(Halcyon sanctaj.


By D. Seth-Smith, F.Z.S.


The numerous family of Kingfishers (. Alcedinidcs ) has been

divided by Dr. Sharpe into two well-defined sub-families, namely,

the fish-eating, or typical Kingfishers ( Alcedinince ) and the

insedt- or reptile-eating group {Dacelonince ), each comprising

several genera.


The genus Alcedo, of which our common European

species ( A. ispida ) is the best known example, belongs to the

first of these groups, and the genus Halcyon , of which the

subjedt of this paper is a well-known species, belongs to the

second sub-family—the land-feeders.


Although very rarely brought alive to Europe, the Sacred

Kingfisher is not at all uncommon in a wild state in Australia,

where it appears to be almost equally distributed over the whole

of the mainland, although, curiously enough, it is not found in

Tasmania. Gould obtained specimens from nearly every part

of Australia, and found that those from Port Essington, on

the North, were identical with those of the South Coast;

whereas, those inhabiting Western Australia were found to be

slightly larger than the others. Although several of the land¬

feeding Kingfishers undoubtedly occasionally resort to streams

and capture fish, Halcyon sancta appears never to adopt this

mode of feeding. “ It seems,” writes Browinowski, “somewhat

of a misnomer to call this bird a Kingfisher, since it not only

does not plunge into the water to capture fish, but is even found

in dry and arid places where it cannot obtain water, from which

it would appear that it can exist without drinking.” I have had

two of these birds in my aviary for nearly a year, and I can

never remember to have seen either of them drink ; but they are

by no means averse to a bath occasionally, when they simply

saturate their plumage and take a long time in drying it again.



