Blue and Bluish 



^a«^^— North America, excejDt where the Texan kingfisher 

 replaces it in a limited area in the Southwest. Common from 

 Labrador to Florida, east and west. Winters chiefly from 

 Virginia southward to South America. 



Migrations— lAzxch. December. Common summer resident. 

 Usually a winter resident also. 



If the kingfisher is not so neighborly as we could wish, or as 

 he used to be, it is not because he has grown less friendly, but 

 because the streams near our homes are fished out. Fish he 

 must and will have, and to get them nowadays it is too often 

 necessary to follow the stream back through secluded woods to 

 the quiet waters of its source : a clear, cool pond or lake whose 

 scaly inmates have not yet learned wisdom at the point of the 

 sportsman's fly. 



In such quiet haunts the kingfisher is easily the most con- 

 spicuous object in sight, where he perches on some dead or pro- 

 jecting branch over the water, intently watching for a dinner that 

 is all unsuspectingly swimming below. Suddenly the bird drops 

 — dives ; there is a splash, a struggle, and then the "lone fisher- 

 man " returns triumphant to his perch, holding a shining fish in his 

 beak. If the fish is small it is swallowed at once, but if it is large 

 and bony it must first be killed against the branch. A few sharp 

 knocks, and the struggles of the fish are over, but the kingfisher's 

 have only begun. How he gags and writhes, swallows his 

 dinner, and then, regretting his haste, brings it up again to try 

 another wider avenue down his throat ! The many abortive 

 efforts he makes to land his dinner safely below in his stomach, 

 his grim contortions as the fishbones scratch his throat-lining on 

 their way down and up again, force a smile in spite of the bird's 

 evident distress. It is small wonder he supplements his fish diet 

 with various kinds of the larger insects, shrimps, and fresh- water 

 mollusks. 



Flying well over the tree-tops or along the waterways, the 

 kingfisher makes the woodland echo with his noisy rattle, that 

 breaks the stillness like a watchman's at midnight. It is, per- 

 haps, the most familiar sound heard along the banks of the inland 

 rivers. No love or cradle song does he know. Instead of soften- 

 ing and growing sweet, as the voices of most birds do in the 

 nesting season, the endearments uttered by a pair of mated king- 

 fishers are the most strident, rattly shrieks ever heard by lovers. 



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