172 THE BIRDS OF SUSSEX. 



small pits which are scattered about the county. Its flight 

 is exceedingly rapid. It feeds principally on small fresh- 

 water fishj for which it may often be seen watching, perched 

 on an overhanging bough, and is then very confiding. I 

 have known it to sit for some time on a fishing-rod stuck 

 into a bank close to me ; on perceiving a fish, it will dash 

 down and seize it, generally by the middle, and either carry 

 it off, or swallow it head first. 



It often hovers over the water for a few seconds before 

 descending on the fish. It is partial to little drains in the 

 salt-marshes near the sea, where it follows the ebbing tides, 

 and pounces on the small Crustacea which it finds there. I 

 have now and then seen it in Shoreham Harbour, or flying 

 across the beach between that and the sea. It also feeds on 

 water-beetles, dragonflies, and other insects. Occasionally, 

 it appropriates the deserted hole of a water-rat, from one of 

 which I dug a nest, close to the Hammer Pond, near Horsham, 

 sometimes very little above the surface of the water, but 

 more commonly it excavates one itself in a bank, sometimes ia 

 in a dry sand-pit, and only large enough to admit itself, and 

 from two, to five or six, feet deep, sloping upwards, and ter- 

 minating in a small chamber. There it forms a cup-shaped 

 nest of its own castings of fish-bones, which smell abomiaably ; 

 the passage to the nest being always, after the hatching of 

 the young, flowing with putrid matter, and swarming with 

 fleas. The note is shrill and piping, uttered as it follows the 

 windings of the stream, or flies up and down a pond. The 

 young assemble on a branch overhanging the water, while 

 waiting for their food, and they then keep up a shrill twitter- 

 ing. In confiinement, the Kingfisher is very pugnacious. 

 The feathers are in great request for making artificial flies, 

 and, from the brilliancy of its plumage, it is a favourite orna- 

 ment in the head-dresses of the ladies, whence its numbers 

 are rapidly diminishing. In some of the Sussex farmhouses 



