POA CHERS. 79 



Kingfishers are the most deadly foes of the fry Swans and 

 and smaller yearlings. Their appetite seems 

 insatiable, and the precision with which they 

 dart on and seize their prey is remarkable. No 

 sportsman likes to take the life of so beautiful a 

 bird as a kingfisher, although probably from the 

 view of the lessee of a fishery engaged in stock- 

 ing up a river, all and every means should be 

 used to get rid of them. If there is a stew or 

 other place in which store fish are kept for any 

 time, nothing but a series of traps on posts and 

 an occasional charge from the keeper's gun will 

 serve to keep them down. 



Swans and ducks do incalculable injury to 

 the eggs and alevins, if not to the fry. It may 

 be said that they are vegetable feeders, but no 

 one watching them busily at work on a shallow 

 during the early spring can have much doubt 

 that, whether they positively devour them 

 or not, they certainly do much mischief by 

 tearing up from the gravel, turning adrift, and 

 destroying the ova or newly hatched fry still 

 encumbered by the umbilical sac. Apart from 

 their injury to the fish themselves, ducks are an 

 unmitigated nuisance on any part of a river. 

 They devour Mayfly, and sometimes the smaller 

 Ephemeridcs as fast as they hatch out. They 

 are always in the fisherman's way, and if driven 

 away disturb all the water over which they pass. 



