BLACK AND WHITE KINGFISHER 53 
only hovering over the Sacred Lake at Karnak, 
but also plunging head foremost down into its 
waters, and securing some food or other, with 
which it has at once flown away to some con- 
venient perch and there swallowed it. Now there 
are no fish in the Karnak Lake, and it is clear 
that what the Kingfisher goes for must be some 
variety of its ordinary fishy food, and must be some 
larve or fine fat water-beetle. When hanging 
thus in mid-air it reminds me a little of our 
own Windhover or Kestrel, in its quick clapping 
stroke of wings, whilst its body and tail hang 
nearly perpendicularly down, till it sees what 
it wants; then the position of its body alters in 
a flash, and down it plunges, and is lost for a 
moment in the splash and spray that it raises by 
the impact with the water. 
