CHAPTER X. 



THE KINGFISHERS AND THEIR KING ROW. 



THE Kingfisher has a strong attachment for particular nesting places, and will 

 occupy the same bank for years, if unmolested, and sometimes even when robbed. 

 The Belted Kingfisher, though widely distributed, seems to be nowhere very 

 abundant. In New Hampshire one rarely finds more than a single pair nesting in the 



neighborhood of any \illage 

 or town. 



The nest now to be de- 

 scribed was drilled into a 

 sand bank beside a country 

 road. It had a straight four- 

 inch bore, which four feet 

 from the opening e.xpanded 

 into a low-vaulted chamber 

 si.K inches high and ten 

 inches across. When this 

 dark subterranean abode 

 was opened at the rear, on 

 the nineteenth day of July, 

 1900, I put in my hand and 

 drew forth in succession five 

 very strange looking creat- 

 ures. They had huge coni- 

 cal bills, short legs, and fat 

 squatty bodies, which bris- 

 tled all o\'er "with steel gra\- 

 "quills," the feather tubes, 

 which had not yet burst, 

 suggesting an antediluvian 

 monster or reptilian bird on 

 a reduced plan. 



These five yourig King- 

 fishers which were then 

 about nine days old liad 



Fig. 76. Tunnel of Kingfisher — the opening seen at the right — in sand bank 

 overgrown with pines, beside country road. August, 1899. 



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