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most large villages and cantonments. It frequents banks of rivers and brooks, edges of tanks, 

 as also the neighbourhood of wells and wet paddy-fields; but it is as frequently found away 

 from water, in groves of trees, gardens, open jungle, and dry cultivation, perching upon trees, 

 poles, walls, old buildings, and any similar situation. Here it watches for a land-crab, mouse, 

 lizard, grasshopper, or other insect, and pounces down upon it, returning to its perch to devour 

 it. Near water it catches fish (for which it sometimes, though rarely, dives), frogs, tadpoles, 

 and water-insects." Canon Tristram also writes (I. c.) as follows : — " It is in all its habits very 

 different from the lively Pied Kingfisher. It never hovers, never is seen in the open ground, 

 but loves to sit moodily for hours on a slender bough overhanging a swamp or pool, where the 

 foliage helps to conceal its brilliant plumage, and where, with cast-down eyes and bill leaning 

 on its breast, it seems benumbed or sleepy until the motions of some lizard or frog in the marsh 

 beneath rouse it to temporary activity. When disturbed it rather slinks away under cover of 

 the overhanging oleanders than trusts for safety to direct flight. Nor does it confine itself to 

 ponds or marshes, but frequently it will perch on a bush in a barley-field watching for lizards 

 or snakes and always bringing its prey back to its perch to devour at its leisure. It will 

 swallow entire very large reptiles. In one I found a snake eighteen inches long, entire ; but I 

 never found in its crop any fish, though it had frequently fed on locusts, most generally, 

 however, on reptiles, whether frogs, toads, lizards, or serpents. It is not gregarious, and we 

 seldom saw more than two together. It is both sedentary and sluggish in its habits, though 

 very wary. The first specimens we obtained were at Jericho, in January, where it resorted to 

 the jujube-trees overhanging the stream from Ain Sultan (Elisha's fountain). Afterwards we 

 met with it all round the coast of the Dead Sea, by the banks of Jordan in thickets, in the 

 swamps of Huleh (Merom) by the Upper Jordan, but especially on the plains of Gennesaret." 

 Mr. Danford informs me that its note is harsh and discordant, and is always uttered in flight. 



The Smyrna Kingfisher breeds in Asia Minor and Palestine late in April or early in May, 

 its eggs being deposited at the end of a tolerably deep hole burrowed in a bank. Layard says 

 that sometimes it builds its nest in a hole in a decayed tree ; but this statement appears to lack 

 confirmation. In India, according to Mr. A. O. Hume (Nests and Eggs of Ind. B. p. 105), " it 

 breeds all over the country from March to July. It lays from four to seven eggs, five being the 

 normal number, in a hole which it excavates for itself, and which varies in length from a little 

 over one to more than three feet, although, as a rule, it does not exceed a couple. This hole is 

 from 1\ to 3 inches in diameter, and terminates in a chamber some 4 inches in height and 8 in 

 diameter. I have never found any nest, so to speak ; but both the passage and chamber often 

 contain remains of frogs, mole crickets, and the like." Canon Tristram, who met with it 

 breeding in Palestine, writes (I. c.) as follows: — "On the plain of Gennesaret, on April 28th, 

 Mr. Bartlett took a nest of five eggs, fresh, in a hole in a bank about six feet high, facing, not 

 a stream, but the lake itself. On the 23rd of May I took a nest of four eggs, slightly incubated, 

 in a bank by the stream Mudawarah, about half a mile above the colony of Ceryle rudis. The 

 nest was at the end of a tunnel, not more than two feet in, and directly facing the entrance, 

 with a very few straws for lining. The entrance was about six inches above the level of the 

 water, and in a deep, sluggish part of the stream. The eggs were nearly spherical, and con- 

 siderably larger than those of C. rudis." I possess only one egg of this bird, presented to me 



