70 
The Queensland Naturalist August 1947 
It is called the “bird of calm that sits brooding on the 
charmed wave” and -when dead “shows the change of 
winds with his prophetic bill,” and further: 
“Thus when the halcyon broods upon the tides 
The winds are lulled.” 
There is, of course, an explanation for all this. A long 
time ago. Haicyone married Ceyx. who was drowned as 
he was going to (Taros to consult the oracle. The gods told 
Ilaleyone of her husband V fate in a dream, and when his 
body was washed up next day on the seashore, she threw 
herself into the sea. They were both changed into birds 
who keep the waters calm and serene while they build and 
sit on their nests for 7, 11 or 14 days. Thus are king- 
fishers associated with serenity, and the word came into 
general use as an adjective. “Halcyon sleep will never 
build his nest In any stormy breast.” 
The belief that kingfishers could foretell a change of 
wind or weather was rife among mariners, and the corpse 
of a bird was sometimes hung from the mast, and the 
direction in which the beak pointed taken to indicate the 
quarter from which the wind would blow. Marlow writes 
in the Jew of Mali a : 
“But how now stands the wind.’ 
Into what corner peers my halyson’s bill?” 
How Avell publicised has been the cuckoo, beloved from 
early times as the herald of spring? The strange thing is 
that the mean habits of the bird, and the revolting way in 
which the young cuckoo will push out the young of its 
foster parents, are almost entirely overlooked, and the 
arrival of the. cuckoo is welcomed on ail sides as giving 
like “the flowers that bloom in the spring” a “promise of 
merry sunshine.” This, while the innocent cormorant is 
freely labelled “greedy” and “rapacious,” is grossly 
unfair. 
Pliny tells us that “vine-dressers were anciently called 
cuckoos because they deferred cutting their vines till that 
bird began to sing, which was later than the right time.” 
This notion probably came to the Romans from the Greeks, 
for in Aristophanes’ comedy, The Birds, is a passage 
relating to the cuckoo and the time of harvest : — 
“ In Sidon and Egypt the Cuckoo was King 
They wait to this hour for the cuckoo to sing ; 
And when he begins, be it later or early, 
They reckon it lawful to gather their barley.” 
