Other long-nosed tunnel diggers you must have seen many a time when you've been fishing, for they are fishers, too—Mr. and Mrs. Kingfisher. Their home is at the end of a tunnel in the banks of the stream where they do their fishing.
While we're visiting them and making a study of their household arrangements, it's a good thing for us that we're not kingfishers ourselves; for if there's anything that makes the kingfishers mad it's to have other kingfishers fooling around their place or even coming into their front yard. Each pair of kingfishers lays claim to the part of the creek in the neighborhood of their nest, as their fishing preserve, and woe betide any other kingfisher that trespasses!
Human fishermen and hunters give it out sometimes that kingfishers eat big fish that might otherwise be caught with a hook or a seine, but the fact is these birds catch only minnows and little shallow-water fish.
In digging the tunnels for their nests the two birds work together, and these tunnels are sometimes fifteen feet long. So you see that with kingfishers scattered around the world as they are—some 200 species in all—they must have done an enormous amount of ploughing in the course of time; to say nothing of what they have done in the way of enriching the soil with fish-bones, one of the very best of all fertilizers.
The kingfisher's nest wouldn't be at all attractive to some birds—the swallows, for example, who are so particular about having feather-beds. It has just a hard-earth floor like the cabins of the American pioneers, but the little kingfishers are perfectly contented and happy; for their meals are very plentiful, fairly regular, and the fish are always fresh.
FISHING DAYS AND OTHER DAYS
But some days even the kingfishers don't have fish for dinner. Instead they serve crayfish and frogs. This is on cloudy days, or when the wind is stiff and the water rough. On such days even the keen eyes of the kingfisher can't see a fish or make out exactly where the fish is when he does see one. But on clear, quiet days, you should see him fish. He often dives from a perch fifty feet or more above the creek and strikes the water so hard you'd think it would knock the breath out of him. But up he comes with his fish, nearly every time!
Of course he misses occasionally, but just think of seeing a fish that far away—under the water, mind you; and not a big fish, but a little minnow, only two or three inches long.
II. Under the Oven-Bird's Friendly Roof
Another great little farmer is the oven-bird. We can't afford to miss him and his wife for anything; and although we have to go to South America to meet them, we'll do it. So here we are! The oven-birds build a nest of clay mixed with some hair or grass or real fine little roots. This nest, when it's all done—it takes a good while to build it—is so big you'd hardly believe it was the home of so small a bird. It's a dome-shaped affair, like a Dutch oven. In the United States we have what we call an "oven-bird," too—one of the water-thrushes; but as its dome-shaped nest is made of grass and leaves and has no clay in it, we will not include this bird among the feathered farmers. The oven-bird of South America knows how to build its dome of clay without any scaffolding, which isn't easy.