with such brilliant
colours. There, did you see that? one of the birds darted off the rail
into the water. I have no doubt he has caught a small fish; and now he
has lighted on the same rail, and with my pocket telescope I can see
him throw his head up and swallow some dainty morsel. It is not at all
an uncommon sight to see a kingfisher hover over the water after the
manner of a kestril-hawk; suddenly it will descend with the greatest
rapidity and again emerge, seldom failing to secure a fish for its
dinner. "Did you ever find a kingfisher's nest, papa?" Willy inquired.
Yes; some years ago I found one in a hole in a bank; there were four
eggs in it, and I had to put my whole arm into the hole before I got
at the nest, which consisted of sand mixed with a great quantity of
very small fish bones. The eggs are very pretty, having a delicate
pink tinge, the shell is thin, and the form of the egg almost round.
"But where," asked Jack, "do the little fish bones of the nest come
from?" I think I have told you that many birds--hawks, eagles, owls,
shrikes, &c.--throw up from their crops the indigestible portions of
their food. It is not uncommon to find these on the ground in the
course of one's rambles. Kingfishers possess this power; they throw up
the undigested fishbones, and curiously enough, as it would appear,
form them into a nest. There is a kingfisher's nest in the British
Museum, which I remember to have seen a few years ago. It has been a
disputed point whether the parent bird throws the fishbones up at
random into the hole where she is going to lay, or whether she forms
them into a nest. The nest in the British Museum was secured at the
expense of great patience and pains by the celebrated ornithologist
and splendid draughtsman, Mr. Gould, whose drawings you may one day
see in the library of the museum at Eyton. This specimen, if I
remember right, was of a flattened form and fully half an inch thick.
It is said that the kingfisher always selects a hole that has an
upward slope, so that, though heavy rains may cause the water of the
river bank to rise into the hole, the eggs will be dry. Some
naturalists have said that kingfishers do not make their own holes,
but use those already made by other animals. Mr. Gould, however, is of
opinion that kingfishers drill their own holes. The tunnels always
slope upwards, as I said; at the further end of the tunnel is an
oven-like chamber where the nest is made. The fish-bone nes