280 
KINGFISHER. 
the eggs may by accident be laid upon portions of these fish bones is 
highly probable, as the floor is so thickly strewed with them, that no 
vacant spot might be found, but they assuredly are not by design built 
up into a nest. 
The hole is from two to four feet long, sloping upwards, narrow at 
the entrance, but widening in the interior, in order perhaps to give the 
birds room to turn, and for the same apparent reason the eggs are not 
placed at the extremity. I am not a little sceptical as to its some- 
times selecting the old hole of a water rat, which is the deadly enemy to 
its eggs and young ; but it seems to indicate a dislike to the labour of 
digging. It frequents the same hole for a series of years, and will 
not abandon it, though the nest be repeatedly plundered of the eggs or 
young. The accumulation of cast bones in one of these old holes, has 
perhaps, given origin to the notion of the nest being formed of them. 
Small fish, such as banisticles, and minnows, seem to be their principal 
food, but they also eat slugs, worms, and leeches. They will occasionally 
suspend themselves on the wing, and dart on their prey like the osprey, 
but more frequently they will sit patiently perched on a bough over 
the water, and pouncing upon the small fish as they come near the sur- 
face, seize them with their bill. 
It is rarely seen about the rocky rapid waters, where the dipper chiefly 
resorts, but is frequently found about wooded streams, and fish-ponds, 
inhabiting the shore of large salt water rivers, and estuaries. 
From having good opportunities of studying the habits of this bird, 
I may remark, that it is not so very shy and solitary as it has been re- 
presented, for it has more than once allowed me to approach within a 
few yards of the bough on which it was perched. Mr. Jennings says 
that it is “ rarely, if ever, found near the habitations of man;”* a state- 
ment at variance with my experience ; for, on the contrary, I am in 
the habit of seeing Kingfishers very often on the banks of a brook 
which runs past my garden at Lee, in Kent, not a hundred yards from 
the house in which I write this paragraph. A Kingfisher’s nest was 
found with young last summer on the bank of the same brook, within 
gunshot of a whole row of houses.”^ A similar instance is given by 
one of Mr. Loudon’s correspondents. Its obtaining its food from 
streams and shallow ponds causes it, however, frequently to be seen in 
secluded places.*^ It flies with great rapidity, notwithstanding its 
wings are very short ; but the motion of the wings are so very quick. 
* Ornithologia, p. 172. ^ Mag. of Nat. Hist. ii. p. 457. 
^ Architecture of Birds. Chap, on Mining Birds, p. 55. 
