136



Correspondence.



at the other end of the enclosure, where he banged it on the head and eat it.

In this case there was no place from which the bird could take a header, as he

could only settle on the tin and snatch the fish. The objection to this to my

mind is the difficulty there would be with a Kingfisher to get him to find this

small tin in a large aviary. In any case the bird must be hand-reared.


W. K. Temple.



KINGFISHERS IN FREEDOM AND CAPTIVITY.


Lady William Cecil (Baroness Amherst of Hackney) writes

I have been much interested to read in the January Magazine the correspondence

about Trout and Kingfishers. We had so many of both at Didlington (Norfolk)

in the old days. My father used to annually breed a large quantity of trout for

many years. They were turned out in the decoy ponds, in the lake and in the

river (Wissey). They did very well and grew and increased continually; we used

constantly to catch them up to several pounds. The Kingfishers did not seem

to interfere at all with the Trout, at least not to any appreciable extent. In the

banks of the lake they nested yearly, sometimes in the bank not 200 yards from

the house, and they fished constantly in the lake (where we could watch them

from the windows) either from the branches of the trees overhanging the water,

or whenever they could, from the mast of our little sailing boat, which was

anchored a short distance from the shore.


We had a tame Kingfisher for some time, it had hurt its wing and so was

caught. We kept it in a big Crystal Palace aviary, which it shared with some

Cordon Bleus and various other little “ foreigners.” We gave it a bank of turf

and a small stump to sit on, for, owing at first to its injured wing, it could not

fly up to sit on the perches; however, it soon recovered and sat on the

perches now and then, though generally preferring the stump. We kept a large

earthenware basin of water in the cage and it was stocked with fish, about six

or eight atja time three or four times a day. The dear little bird soon became

very tame and would perch on the rim of the bowl the moment we put in his

fish. We gave him all sorts of small fry, and I think if he had any preference

it was for small gudgeon. He remained in perfect plumage and did not mope at

all. I am sorry to say some one gave him an extra supply of fish one morning

and he ate thirteen at a sitting and never recovered the fatal feast- I believe

he would have comfortably digested double that number had he been at libertjq

but he had so little exercise in the cage and his food was too easily caught, so

that his greediness was the cause of his death. We never allowed any Kingfishers

to be killed at Didlington, and any places on the banks of the lake or any stream

where there were nests, were always left undisturbed until the nestlings were

ready to fly.



