THE KINGFISHER, (Alcedo ispida,)
Is the Halcyon of the ancients, and his name recalls to our mind the most lively ideas. It was believed, that, as long as the female sat upon her eggs, the god of storms and tempests refrained from disturbing the calmness of the waves, and Halcyon days were, for navigators of old, the most secure times to perform their voyages:
“As firm as the rock, and as calm as the flood,
Where the peace-loving Halcyon deposits her brood.”
But although this bears analogy to a natural coincidence between the time of breeding assigned to the Kingfishers and a part of the year when the ocean is less tempestuous, yet Mythology would exercise her fancy, and turn into wonders that which was nothing else than the common course of nature.
This bird is nearly as small as a common sparrow, but the head and beak appear proportionally too big for the body. The bright blue of the back and wings claims our admiration, as it changes into deep purple or lively green, according to the angles of light under which the bird presents itself to the eye. It generally haunts the banks of rivers, for the purpose of seizing small fish, on which it subsists, and which it takes in amazing quantities, by balancing itself at a distance above the water for a certain time, and then darting on the fish with unerring aim. It dives perpendicularly into the water, where it continues several seconds, and then brings up the fish, which it carries to land, beats to death, and afterwards swallows. When it cannot find a projecting bough, it sits on some stone near the brink, or even on the gravel; but the moment it perceives the fish, it takes a spring upwards of twelve or fifteen feet, and drops from that height upon its prey.
The Kingfisher lays its eggs, to the number of seven or more, in a hole in the bank of the river or stream that it frequents. Dr. Heysham had a female brought alive to him at Carlisle by a boy, who said he had taken it the preceding night when sitting on its eggs. His information on the subject was, that “having often observed these birds frequent a bank upon the river Peteril, he had watched them carefully, and at last he saw them go into a small hole in the bank. The hole was too narrow to admit his hand; but, as it was made in soft mould, he easily enlarged it. It was upwards of half a yard long; at the end of it the eggs, which were six in number, were placed upon the bare mould, without the smallest appearance of a nest.” The eggs were considerably larger than those of the yellow-hammer, and of a transparent white colour. It appears, from a still later account, that the direction of the holes is always upward; that they are enlarged at the end, and have there a kind of bedding formed of the bones of small fish, and some other substances, evidently the castings of the parent animals. This bedding is generally half an inch thick, and mixed with earth; and on it the female deposits and hatches her eggs. When the young ones are nearly full-feathered they are extremely voracious; and as the old birds do not supply them with all the food they can devour, they are continually chirping, and may be discovered by their noise.
