The Kingfisher is the arch-enemy of the fish, and it is hardly credible that this relatively small bird, should gulp down, as it does, fish as long as your finger, in order to fill his stomach. It digests very quickly, and spits out the bones, scales, and fins. It watches, from a bough, for the little fish. Where a bush bending over the water undisturbed by the eddy forms a calm mirror,--there does this resplendent fish-poacher settle itself on an overhanging bough, to watch--motionless and with incredible tenacity--the water and the living things beneath it. If a trout or other small fish, feeling quite safe, comes to the surface, the Kingfisher drops on it like a piece of lead; it grasps its prey with its sharp beak, and, shaking the water from its plumage, flies back to its perch, gulps down its delicate morsel, and sets itself again to watch. Its colour protects the bird when diving. The underparts are much the same colour as a fallen leaf, and this arouses no suspicion in the fish--the back, on the other hand, shines like the blue shimmer of the running stream, and that often protects the bird from the circling Sparrow-hawk. If it comes to a flat shore on the side of a small stream, which offers no overhanging perching place, it settles on a stake or a clod of earth, and now and then hovers over the water, and flutters like a hawk. It is an inconstant bird. It appears, and disappears from a district, and then, perhaps after some years, presents itself again. Its flight is rapid, and it raises its cry, as it goes, “_teet_.” It does harm, but is scarce in Hungary. * * * * * [Illustration: HARMFUL. THE KINGFISHER.] In Great Britain it was also becoming scarce, but of late years Bird Protection and the ever increasing number of bird-lovers has been in favour of this beautiful ornament of streams and meadows. It is, however, often shot because its feathers are of value for dressing artificial flies. Personally I could not call a bird hurtful because it seeks the food which its Creator _intended_ it to eat, which is no more the property of man when it is taken in its natural conditions than it is that of the bird, and I confess I would rather see the brilliant blue of the Kingfisher flash up a meadow stream than the angler’s figure there with his rod.