. Camera studies of wild birds in their homes . Fig. 191. The hank cut away to show the little fishers^ atthe end of the tunnel. to her home; greatly to my surprise, she alighted neither onthe roots nor on the edge of the hole, but seemed to dashright in without a pause. Her departure was almost asrapid; she backed out the length of the tunnel and, justas her tail appeared at the opening, whirled about and wasoff in a flash. During half a dozen visits that she made, she enteredand left in the same manner; as I was not prepared to makemoving pictures, the best I could do was to get her back-ing
. Camera studies of wild birds in their homes . Fig. 191. The hank cut away to show the little fishers^ atthe end of the tunnel. to her home; greatly to my surprise, she alighted neither onthe roots nor on the edge of the hole, but seemed to dashright in without a pause. Her departure was almost asrapid; she backed out the length of the tunnel and, justas her tail appeared at the opening, whirled about and wasoff in a flash. During half a dozen visits that she made, she enteredand left in the same manner; as I was not prepared to makemoving pictures, the best I could do was to get her back-ing out, just as she started to turn about. The bird shown 15 226 in one of the illustrations, with a mullet in its bill, wasmore considerate for she lit on a stick thrust into the bankfor that purpose and allowed Mr. R. H. Beebe to take sev-eral pictures of her. Young kingfishers are very comical birds both in appear-ance and in actions. At an early aaje, thev are entirely cov-. Fig. 192. Little Kingfishers are very ^spiney^^ orpin-feath-ery during the early stages of their life. ered with coarse pin-feathers, giving them a bristly appear-ance like little porcupines. They remain in the nest aboutthree weeks at the end of which time they closely resembletheir parents in plumage. Although six or seven of them haveto occupy rather cramped quarters in their home, it does notseem to develop brotherly love to any great extent. Theyalways seem to be biting at one another. On one occasionwhen I had seven of them side by side on a rail, a youngsteron one end grabbed the fellow next to him by the wing;this one seized the next and so on along the whole row, theseven of them finally going to the ground in a connectedtangle. Undoubtedly, their rough actions hasten their de- 227 velopment by bursting the casing of the pin-feathers soonerthan they would unaided, and it may be that this is thepurpose of their roughness. The tunnel that leads to the nest is just large enough
Size: 2469px × 1012px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidcamerast, booksubjectbirds
