United States or Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Water wag-tails flit along the shore, or in the most friendly manner board your steamer to feed on the crumbs from your tea-table, while large numbers of gay-plumaged king-fishers dart in and out from their nests tunnelled far into the precipitous face of the river-bank. On either side are the eternal hills, beautiful under any effect of light.

Otters, king-fishers, dabchicks, moorhens, all of them about all day long and always wanting you to do something as if a fellow had no business of his own to attend to!" "What lies over there?" asked the Mole, waving a paw towards a background of woodland that darkly framed the water-meadows on one side of the river. "That? O, that's just the Wild Wood," said the Rat shortly.

After this, Phalguna proceeded towards Karna's car. Beholding that great bowman thus proceeding, all creatures, O Bharata, regarded Karna as already slain by the high-souled Pandava. All the points of the compass, O king, became serene. King-fishers and parrots and herons, O king, wheeled around the son of Pandu.

Gould, J., on migration of swifts; on the arrival of male snipes before the females; on the numerical proportion of the sexes in birds; on Neomorpha Grypus; on the species of Eustephanus; on the Australian musk-duck; on the relative size of the sexes in Briziura lobata and Cincloramphus cruralis; on Lobivanellus lobatus; on habits of Menura Alberti; on the rarity of song in brilliant birds; on Selasphorus platycerus; on the Bower-birds; on the ornamental plumage of the Humming-birds; on the moulting of the ptarmigan; on the display of plumage by the male Humming-birds; on the shyness of adorned male birds; on the decoration of the bowers of Bower-birds; on the decoration of their nest by Humming-birds; on variation in the genus Cynanthus; on the colour of the thighs in a male parrakeet; on Urosticte Benjamini; on the nidification of the Orioles; on obscurely-coloured birds building concealed nests; on trogons and king-fishers; on Australian parrots; on Australian pigeons; on the moulting of the ptarmigan; on the immature plumage of birds; on the Australian species of Turnix; on the young of Aithurus polytmus; on the colours of the bills of toucans; on the relative size of the sexes in the marsupials of Australia; on the colours of the Marsupials.

M'Clelland, in describing these fishes, goes so far as to suppose that "the peculiar brilliancy of their colours" serves as "a better mark for king-fishers, terns, and other birds which are destined to keep the number of these fishes in check"; but at the present day few naturalists will admit that any animal has been made conspicuous as an aid to its own destruction.

Excellent steeds of the hue of the king-fishers bore Draupadi's son Srutkirti to that battle, who like Partha was an ocean of learning. Steeds of a tawny hue bore the youthful Abhimanyu who was regarded as superior to Krishna or Partha one and a half times in battle.

This practice of the birds is not so uncommon as it might at first seem. It is indeed almost an invariable rule among all land birds. With woodpeckers and kindred species, and with birds that burrow in the ground, as bank swallows, king-fishers, etc., it is a necessity. The accumulation of the excrement in the nest would prove most fatal to the young.

We amused ourselves catching trout in the mill-pond, and shooting king-fishers, about the hardest bird there is to kill in all creation, and between one and the other sport, you may depend we enjoyed ourselves first-rate.

They were moored side by side, like two tall, slender girls, in their narrow shining length, and excited the wish to float in them on warm summer mornings and evenings, along the bower-covered banks of the river, where the trees dipped their branches into the water, where the rushes are continually rustling in the breeze, and where the swift king-fishers dart about like flashes of blue lightning.

Aedituus, who soon found it out, said to him, You know, sir, that seven days before winter, and seven days after, there is no storm at sea; for then the elements are still out of respect for the halcyons, or king-fishers, birds sacred to Thetis, which then lay their eggs and hatch their young near the shore.