THE KINGFISHER 155 



trespass on their domain. But there comes a time when 

 the j)airs are apt to leave their particular haunts, and go 

 where others go. This is when the approach of winter 

 gives hints of frozen brooks and lakes, and tells them, in 

 that mysterious way that no one seems to understand 

 even now, that it will be wiser to frequent the broader 

 rivers, and especially the river-mouths, where "there is 

 too much movement and perhaps too much sea-salt in 

 the waters for the frost to work its will. 



When they resort thus to estuaries and seashores, tiny 

 crabs, sandhoppers, shrimps, and the like are added to 

 their diet ; and in their usual summer haunts they will 

 often catch and eat water-beetles and dragon-flies. But 

 first and foremost they are fish-eaters, and the number they 

 manage to catch, especially when they have a full nursery 

 to provide for, is surprising. 



Although the young birds do not get the vivid colours 

 of their parents till their second spring-time, it is a very 

 pretty sight to see them sitting together outside their 

 burrow-like home. Jefferies describes how he came upon 

 a family of little 'fishers waiting to be fed. It appears that 

 they took up their position there day after day : 



" One summer, I found four young Kingfishers perched 

 in a row on a dead branch crossing a brook which ran for 

 some distance behind a double-mound hedge. . . . Every 

 now and then the parents came with small fish, which they 

 caught further down the brook." 



And he goes on to point out what a favourite place for 

 a Kingfisher to use as a perch, when he is on the watch for 

 his prey, is the lower boughs of a hawthorn, which is so 

 often " thick and impenetrable above, but more open below, 

 just above the water. . . . When passing such a bush, how 

 many times have I seen a brilliant streak of azure shoot 



