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The birds were so angry with old Master Owl for his carelessness that he has never since dared to show his face abroad in daytime, but hides away in his hollow tree. And only at night he wanders alone in the woods, sorry and ashamed. The story of the first Kingfisher is a sad one, and you need not read it unless for a very little while you wish to feel sorry.
Nor is their wonder diminished by what they see and hear close at hand. It is the call-note of the black woodpecker. And, as if in response to it, a kingfisher, perched on the limb of a dead tree by the beach, now and then utters its shrill, ear-piercing scream. Other fishing-birds of different species fly hither and thither over the water, now quite tranquil, the wind having died away.
The new Governor-General, who entered Boston harbor in the Kingfisher on December 19, 1686, was Sir Edmund Andros, a few years before the Duke of York's Governor for the propriety of New York. Andros at this time was forty-nine years old; he was a soldier by training and a man of considerable experience in positions requiring executive ability.
One side of the stream was marshy so that he pushed into tall grass and cat-tails and startled an indignant kingfisher who was dozing on a dead tree. The bird went skimming off, a flash of blue and white that he followed as he came about. On the other side, the current ran close beside the high banks of earth that protected the fields within.
He struck the water with such force that it splashed above the willows, and a kingfisher, stationed on a stump opposite him, watching the shoals for minnows, saw it. He spread his beak and rolled forth rattling laughter, until his voice reechoed from point to point down the river. The Cardinal scarcely knew how he got out, but he had learned a new lesson.
All these birds being fish-eaters, no distinction is afforded arising from diversity of food; but the Hebrew naturalist begins with those which inhabit the sea and its rocky cliffs, the gannet and the cormorant; then he proceeds to the marsh birds, the bitterns; then to the river and lake birds, the pelican, the kingfisher, or the shagarag; then the stork, which is a bird of passage, lives on land as well as on water, and feeds on frogs and insects no less than on fish; then to another, which probably is a bird of passage also, because it is mentioned the last in the catalogue.
And still, in the herbage, hummed the small insects, and still, from the cavern, laughed the great kingfisher. I said to Ayesha, "Farewell! your love mourns the dead, mine calls me to the living. You are now with your own people, they may console you; say if I can assist." "There is no consolation for me! What mourner can be consoled if the dead die forever?
I see the bittern rising with hollow scream as they break in upon his rarely-invaded haunt; the kingfisher watching them suspiciously from his dry tree that overhangs the deep black millpond in the gorge of the hills; the tortoise letting himself slip sideways from off the stone or log on which he is sunning himself; and the panic-struck frog plumping in headlong as they approach, and spreading an alarm throughout the watery world around.
Our faith in Nature's grandeur and beauty becomes stronger as each succeeding year slips away; the kingfisher shall still watch from his perch on some pine bough the finny inhabitants below him; the chimney swifts will still fly through the spray of the falls for their bath; the flowers, if not on Goat Island, will be just as fair as those that blossomed long ago in their pristine loveliness; the stars when day is done will gleam in the velvet sky as brightly as those of far Judea.
In the morning so I am told by my friend the kingfisher they were rescued by a fisherman who lived near the river bank. The children had been lying on the bench, listening lazily to the chatter up to this point; but when they heard the story of the crystal cradle which their foster-mother had always been fond of telling them, they sat upright and looked at each other.
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