BELTED KINGSFISIIER. 
351 
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 beginning 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 intelligent 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, 
like those of the Society Isles, nor dreaded, like those of some 
