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The old mothers are a good deal tamer now than they were in the shooting season. Many a time have they got up, just out of shot, when I was trying to wile away the time during the great frost with a little stalking. A kingfisher shoots past; but I have given up trying to find her nest. There is a brood of dabchicks, and, a little further on, another family of wild duck.

We have in England instances in the kingfisher, some woodpeckers, the jay, magpie, crow, and many small dull- coloured birds, such as the hedge-warbler or kitty-wren. But the similarity in plumage between the young and the old is never complete, and graduates away into dissimilarity. Jerdon, 'Birds of India, vol. i. pp. 222, 228. Audubon, 'Ornith.

Kingfisher. "Once fishing in the Moisie, where the fish are very large, I hooked a salmon at five in the morning and lost him at six in the evening: he was on for thirteen hours, but he sulked at the bottom most of the time, and I never saw him at all." Scribe. "Perhaps it was no fish at all." Kingfisher.

Calling in an injured tone, as if much annoyed, he flew, swept round the meadow, and so to the river behind me. His friend followed. On reaching the river at a safe distance down, he skimmed along the surface like a kingfisher. They find abundance of insect life among the stones at the falls, and everywhere in shallow water.

Because of the many kingfishers flying about it was called Kingfisher Canyon, and a point where they were especially numerous was named Bee-hive. At the foot of this third short canyon the rocks ran together in a forbidding manner, and out of the depths beyond came a roar, just as one outside of the jungle might hear the lion's note within.

Kingfishers, herons, and other creatures are very partial to young trout and will cause enormous destruction if not prevented. Kingfishers have, in my experience, been the worst offenders. Some years ago I was rearing some trout in a part of the country where many of the inhabitants bewailed the extermination of the kingfisher.

Afar, at the foot of the mountains, the fugitive herds were grazing; the cranes, flocking back to the pools, renewed the strange grace of their gambols; and the great kingfisher, whose laugh, half in mirth, half in mockery, leads the choir that welcome the morn, which in Europe is night, alighted bold on the roof of the cavern, whose floors were still white with the bones of races, extinct before so helpless through instincts, so royal through Soul rose Man!

Standing here one morning in the early summer, suddenly a kingfisher came shooting straight towards me, and swerving a little passed within three yards; his blue wings, his ruddy front, the white streak beside his neck, and long bill were visible for a moment; then he was away, straight over the meadows, till he cleared a distant hedge and disappeared.

A ruddy kingfisher swiftly drawing himself as you might draw a stroke with a pencil, over the surface of the yellow buttercups, and away above the hedge. Hart's-tongue fern, thick with green, so green as to be thick with its colour, deep in the ditch under the shady hazel boughs. White meadow-sweet lifting its tiny florets, and black-flowered sedges.

The big kingfisher did not put in an appearance, and the sun-birds equally failed me: the smallest item of my collection measures two and a quarter inches, and is robed in blue, crimson, and sulphur. Sharp's department of the British Museum. I killed a few little snakes and one large green tree-snake; two crocodiles, both lost in the river, and an iguana, which found its way into the spirit-cask.