BELTED KINGSFISHER. ^ Y 



streams, with high perpendicular banks, particularly if they be 

 of a hard clayey or sandy nature, are also favourite places of 

 resort for this bird ; not only because in such places the small 

 fish are more exposed to view, but because those steep and 

 dry banks are the chosen situations for his nest. Into these 

 he digs with bill and claws horizontally, sometimes to the 

 extent of four or five feet, at the distance of a foot or two from 

 the surface. The few materials he takes in are not always 

 placed at the extremity of the hole, that he and his mate may 

 have room to turn with convenience. The eggs are five, pure 

 white, and the first brood usually comes out about the begin- 

 ning of June, and sometimes sooner, according to the part of 

 the country where they reside. On the shores of Kentucky 

 river, near the town of Frankfort, I found the female sitting 

 early in April. They are very tenacious of their haunts, 

 breeding for several successive years in the same hole, and do 

 not readily forsake it, even though it be visited. An intelli- 

 gent young gentleman informed me, that having found where 

 a kingsfisher built, he took away its eggs from time to time, 

 leaving always one behind, until he had taken no less than 

 eighteen from the same nest. At some of these visits, the 

 female, being within, retired to the extremity of the hole, 

 while he withdrew the egg, and next day, when he returned, 

 he found she had laid again as usual. 



The fabulous stories related by the ancients of the nest, 

 manner of hatching, &c, of the kingsfisher, are too trifling to 

 be repeated here. Over the winds and the waves the humble 

 kingsfishers of our days, at least the species now before us, 

 have no control. Its nest is neither constructed of glue nor 

 fish-bones ; but of loose grass and a few feathers. It is not 

 thrown on the surface of the water to float about, with its 

 proprietor, at random, but snugly secured from the winds and 

 the weather in the recesses of the earth ; neither is its head or 

 its feathers believed, even by the most illiterate of our clowns 

 or seamen, to be a charm for love, a protection against witch- 

 craft, or a security for fair weather. It is neither venerated 



