60 



BELTED KINGSFISHER. 



a hard clayey or sandy nature, are also favorite 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 beginning of June, and sometimes sooner, according to that 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 se- 

 veral successive years in the same hole, and do not readily forsake 

 it, even tho it be visited. An intelligent young gentleman inform- 

 ed 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, man- 

 ner of hatching, &c. of the Kingsfisher, are too trifling to be re- 

 peated here. Over the winds and the waves the humble Kings- 

 fishers of our days, at least the species now before us, have no con- 

 trol. 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 illite- 

 rate of our clowns or seamen, to be a charm for love, a protection 

 against witchcraft, or a security for fair weather. It is neither ve- 

 nerated like those of the Society isles, nor dreaded like those of 



