not returning,
and he vanished like a shadow.

"There is one brood of kingfishers the less," I thought, with my glasses
focused on the hole. But scarcely was the thought formed, when a fierce
rumbling clatter sounded in the bank. The mink shot out, a streak of
red showing plainly across his brown face. After him came a kingfisher
clattering out a storm of invective and aiding his progress by vicious
jabs at his rear. He had made a miscalculation that time; the old mother
bird was at home waiting for him, and drove her powerful beak at his
evil eye the moment it appeared at the inner end of the tunnel. That
took the longing for young kingfisher all out of Cheokhes. He plunged
headlong down the bank, the bird swooping after him with a rattling
alarm that brought another kingfisher in a twinkling. The mink dived,
but it was useless to attempt escape in that way; the keen eyes above
followed his flight perfectly. When he came to the surface, twenty feet
away, both birds were over him and dropped like plummets on his head. So
they drove him down stream and out of sight.

Years afterward I solved the second problem suggested by the
kingfisher's den, when I had the good fortune, one day, to watch a pair
beginning their tunneling. All who have ever watched the bird have, no
doubt, noticed his wonderful ability to stop short in swift flight and
hold himself poised in midair for an indefinite time, while watching
the movements of a minnow beneath. They make use of this ability in
beginning their nest on a bank so steep as to afford no foothold.

As I watched the pair referred to, first one then the other would hover
before the point selected, as a hummingbird balances for a moment at the
door of a trumpet flower to be sure that no one is watching ere he goes
in, then drive his beak with rapid plunges into the bank, sending down a
continuous shower of clay to the river below. When tired he rested on a
watch-stub, while his mate made a battering-ram of herself and kept up
the work. In a remarkably short time they had a foothold and proceeded
to dig themselves in out of sight.

Kingfisher's tunnel is so narrow that he cannot turn around in it. His
straight, strong bill loosens the earth; his tiny feet throw it
out behind. I would see a shower of dirt, and perchance the tail of
Koskomenos for a brief instant, then a period of waiting, and another
shower. This kept up till the tunnel was bored perhaps two feet, when
they undoubte