Keeping quiet and still in our corner, we had only a few minutes to wait. The familiar, high-pitched cry rang out from the sunny breadth of the river. And then, into the cool, grey light, came what looked like a flying spark of emerald fire. The bird pitched on a wand of sallow that drooped nearly to the water just opposite our retreat. Here he sat awhile carelessly preening his magnificent feathers. Below him the water lay glassy-still and clear, reflecting his tawny breast and the rich chequer-work of gold blossom and blue sky overhead. The kingfisher did not watch the stream with that motionless vigilance that one reads of in the nature books. He seemed to give the gliding water scarce a thought, but to be intent only on the contemplation of his own finery, as he twirled on his perch, reaching now and again over his shoulder to set straight a feather that had gone awry. But suddenly he stopped in this popinjay performance, pointed his bill downward, and plunged like a stone. The glittering emerald vanished. On the mirror of the waters there spread ring within ring of light. What seemed like whole minutes passed in waiting and silence. And then all the brilliant green and blue and amber burst into view again, as the bird came up in a scatter of diamonds, and lanced straight back to his perch. Now we could see he held a minnow, a little writhing atom of silver, crosswise in his beak. He struck it to and fro on the hard wood until he had killed it. Then, at a single gulp, it was down his throttle. Again the kingfisher sat preening his gorgeous plumage, with the same dilettante touch and light carelessness, as though the shining treasury of the waters below concerned him not a jot. III I often wonder how it is that the old saying, about March and its leonine or lamb-like incomings and outgoings, should have kept so sturdily its place in popular credence. Looking through a pile of old note-books ranging back over a couple of decades or so, I find that, in the majority of years, March has both begun and ended in the lamb-like character. The lion appears only in the rôle of an interloper, a go-between; for, almost invariably, there has been a period of chilly, riotous weather sometime after the middle of the month. So it has come about this season. Yesterday was a day without a flaw; and as the sun began at last to mellow and decline, dragging a net of shining golden haze behind it over the western hills, I gave up a day-long, though still unfinished task, and went to sit awhile on the churchyard wall.