THE KINGFISHER. 
107 
and to dash at any incautious fish which swims under it. If secured, the fish is 
sometimes beaten to death against a stone or rail and then swallowed head fore¬ 
most, the bones, &c., being cast up in the form of pellets, as with the hawks. The 
Kingfisher possesses no song, but when on the wing utters a shrill piping. The 
young, however, are very noisy, and when fully fledged, and the nest is abandoned, 
sit upon some branch while the parents fish for them. As the old ones approach 
they become very clamorous. 
The flight of the bird is very swift, in an undeviating straight line, generally 
over water, and not very high above it, something after the manner of another 
aquatic bird, the dipper. Its nesting arrangements are very simple. Taking 
possession of any suitable hole in the bank—often a water-rat’s run—it deposits its 
eggs on a saucer-like nest formed of the bones which, as we have said, it casts up. 
No moss or bents are employed about it, the bird not being used to settle on the 
ground. Montagu says that the old birds frequent this hole for some time before 
the eggs are laid in order to secure a due deposit of bones. The eggs are seven in 
number, of a short oval form, and quite white and transparent. The hole and the 
passage to it become very foul and fetid, from the dirty habits of the old birds ; 
but as they take care that the hole shall ascend in the bank rather than descend, 
these inconveniences do not give the little ones any annoyance. Mr. Rennie, the 
ornithologist, thinks that as the fish-bones are voided anywhere, in the passage or 
the hole itself, it only happens by accident that the eggs are laid on them ; while 
Gould states that the eggs are deposited in a hole by the female without making 
any nest. Jesse relates that a Kingfisher’s nest was discovered in the bank of a 
small gravel-pit. It contained six eggs, and “ was composed, as usual, of small 
fish-bones, and was placed about two feet in the bank.” It is curious to see how 
ornithologists differ on this point. The bird itself is not sufficiently common for 
its habits to be easily investigated, or else it would seem that this vexed question 
might speedily be settled. Every school-boy, when first trusted with a gun, shoots 
a Kingfisher; men who ought to know better kill this bird for the mere love of 
shooting any bird at all out of the common, or the vanity of having its caricature 
set up in a glass case (the bright tints of the bird fade after death); while the 
gamekeeper also wages war upon it from the same traditional feeling which prompts 
him to shoot that harmless bird, the water ousel. With so many foes leagued 
against him it is no wonder that the Kingfisher is now a rare bird. A friend 
once shot a specimen of this bird, which fell on the other side of the stream. 
He went round a quarter of a mile to a bridge, and so crossing over procured the 
