. Nature study; birds . ityuntil afternoon, so we can spend thismorning together. This was the de-lightful news -that their uncle told thechildren one morning at , good! exclaimed can go down to the mill pondagain. It has loeen nearly three weekssince we were there and I supposethat most of the blackbirds have fin-ished with their nesting, but we cansurely find something else. To the childrens surprise and de- KINGFISHER light we found that the blackbirds were still there and we found several more of their nests, some with eggs and some with young birds, but we found someth
. Nature study; birds . ityuntil afternoon, so we can spend thismorning together. This was the de-lightful news -that their uncle told thechildren one morning at , good! exclaimed can go down to the mill pondagain. It has loeen nearly three weekssince we were there and I supposethat most of the blackbirds have fin-ished with their nesting, but we cansurely find something else. To the childrens surprise and de- KINGFISHER light we found that the blackbirds were still there and we found several more of their nests, some with eggs and some with young birds, but we found something else that was of even more interest to them. Dick first noticed the gray and white bird hovering, withrapidly beating wings, over the pond as though he wereabout to dive into the water; instead, however, he flew acrossthe pond making a harsh rattling*sound, as he went, thatannounced him to be a Kingfisher. He perched on a beam that projected from the old millout o\er the water and waited patiently for a fish to come. 65 near tlit- surface; we waited just as patiently to see what liewould do. I think he sees a fish now/ said Dick, who had the fieldglasses. YeSj there he goes ! Straight down, like an arrow he went and disappearedbeneath the surface; in an instant he emerged, shook thewater from his feathers and we could see that he carried afair sized fish in his large beak. Instead of going to hisIerch and .swallowing his prey as usual, he gave a half-smothered rattle and stai-ted off across the field. It looks as though, this time, he was fishing for somelittle kingfishers instead of for himself, doesnt it children?Well, he is a good fisherman and has better success thanmost boys or men. Somewhere, not very far away, in the direction in whichour Kingfisher friend just flew, is a sand bank. At theend of a tunnel in this bank are half .i do^en of his chil-dren eagerly waiting for him. If you could see the Kingfishers feet jou would findthat his toes have partl_y grown togethe
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1910
