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Birds & Nature Magazine 



The Kingfisher's Kindergarten 



By WILLIAM J. LONG 



(Author of " The Wood-Folk Series,'' "^ Little Brother to the Bear,'' etc.) 



KOSKOMENOS, the Kingfisher, 

 still burrows in the earth like his 

 reptile ancestors ; therefore the other 

 birds call him outcast and will have 

 nothing to do with him. But he cares 

 little for that, being a clattering, rattle- 

 headed, self-satisfied fellow, who seems to 

 do nothing all day long but fish and eat. 

 As 5^ou follow him, however, you note with 

 amazement that he does some things mar- 

 velously well — better indeed than any other 

 of the w^ood-folk. To locate a fish ac- 

 curately in still water is difficult enough 

 when one thinks of light-refraction, but 

 when the fish is moving and the sun glares 

 down into the pool and the wind wrinkles 

 its face into a thousand flashing, changing 

 furrows and ridges — then the bird that can 

 point a bill straight to his fish and hit him 

 fair just behind the gills must have more 

 in his head than the usual chattering gossip 

 that one hears from him on the trout 

 streams. 



This was the lesson that impressed 

 itself upon me when I first began to study 

 Koskomenos and the object of this little 

 sketch, which records those first strong im- 

 pressions, is not to give dur kingfisher's 

 color or markings or breeding habits — you 

 can get all that from the bird books — but 

 to suggest a possible answer to the question 

 of how he learns so much, and how he 

 teaches his wisdom to the little kingfishers. 



Just below my camp, one summer, was 

 a trout pool. Below the trout pool was a 

 shaded minnow basin — a kind of storehouse 

 for the pool above, where the trout forged 

 in the early and late twilight, and where, 

 if you hooked a red-fin delicately on a fine 

 leader and dropped it in from the crotch 

 of an overhanging tree, you might some- 

 times catch a big one. 



Early one morning, while I was sitting 

 in the tree, a kingfisher swept up the river 

 and disappeared under the opposite bank. 

 He had a nest in there, so cunningly hidden 

 under an overhanging root that till then I 

 had not discovered it, though I had fished 



the pool and seen the kingfishers clattering 

 about many times. They were unusually 

 noisy when I was near, and flew up stream 

 over the trout pool w^ith a long, rattling 

 call again and again — a ruse, no doubt, to 

 make me think that their nest was some- 

 where far above. 



I watched the nest closely after that, in 

 the intervals when I was not fishing, and 

 learned many things to fill one with won- 

 der and respect with this unknown, clatter- 

 ing outcast of the wilderness rivers. He 

 has a devotion for his mate, and feeds her 

 most gallantly while she is brooding. He 

 has courage, plenty of it, and one day drove 

 off a mink and almost killed the savage 

 creature. He has well-defined fishing regu- 

 lations and enforces them rigorously, never 

 going be^^ond his limits and permitting no 

 poaching on his minnow pools. He also 

 has fishing lore enough in his frowsy head 

 — if one could get it out — to make Izaak 

 Walton's discourse like a child's babble. 

 Whether the wind be south or northeast, 

 whether the day be dull or bright, he knows 

 exactly where the little fish will be found, 

 and how to catch them. 



When the young birds came the most 

 interesting bit of Koskomenos' life was 

 manifest. One morning as I sat watch- 

 ing, hidden away in the bushes, the mother 

 kingfisher put her head out of her hole 

 and looked about very anxiously. A big 

 water-snake lay stretched along a stranded 

 log on the shore. She pounced upon him 

 instantly, and drove him out of sight. Just 

 above, at the foot of the trout pool, a brood 

 of sheldrake were croaking and splashing 

 about in the shallows. They were harm- 

 less, yet the kingfisher rushed upon them, 

 clattering and scolding like a fishwife, and 

 harried them all away into a quiet bogan. 



On the way back she passed over a frog, 

 a big, sober, sleepy fellow waiting on a 

 lily-pad for his sunbath. Chigwoolz might 

 catch young trout, and even little birds as 

 they came to drink, but he would surely 

 never molest a brood of kingfishers ; yet the 



