the various water-beetles. Now all these have been found in the stomach of the dipper, and therefore it must confer a decided benefit on the salmon and trout streams which it haunts. Of all our British birds none is so beautiful or so secluded in its habits as the kingfisher; and its presence is peculiarly in keeping with the rapid, rocky trout streams which it loves to haunt. Although glowing with metallic lustres, and beautiful in its adaptation and every movement, the kingfisher builds but a careless nest, a loose structure of dry fish bones--the hard indigestible parts of its food which, in common with birds of prey, it has the power of ejecting in pellets by the mouth. Again, let us look out the bird in its haunts. We follow the course of the hazel-fringed stream over a mile of its pebbly reaches; now a dipper flits from a green mossy stone, and a pair of sandpipers start with tremulous wings and skirt the shingle-strewn banks. Among the flags the water-voles gnaw the sweet saccharine aquatic plants, and the water-hens run and hide under the friendly roots of an overhanging thorn. The May-fly is upon the stream, the silvery fresh run fish are all animation, and even the great black trout in the "willow dub" condescends to take a fat blue-bottle that is spinning round and round the pool. Dragon-flies dart hither and thither, bronze fly and bee are upon the wing, and the carpet of grass and flowers is alive with innumerable insects, all busily engaged in fertilising their floral friends, or revelling in nectar, and gilded with golden pollen. The lime-trees are "a murmurous haunt of summer wings," and the breath of summer is on our cheek. Over there is an overhanging, leafless bough and upon it has just alighted a kingfisher. At first its form is motionless, then it assumes more animation, and anon is all eye and ear. Then it falls, hangs for a moment in the air like a kestrel, and returns to its perch. Again it darts with unerring aim and secures something. This is tossed, beaten and broken with a formidable beak, and swallowed head foremost. This process is again and again repeated, and we find that the prey is small fish. From watching an hour we are entranced with the beauty of the fluttering, quivering thing as the sun glints from its green and gold vibrations in mid-air. We gain some estimation, too, of the vast amount of immature fish which a pair of kingfishers and their young must destroy in a single season.[4] Later in summer the young brood may be seen with open quivering wings, constantly calling as the parent birds fly up and down stream. Their food consists almost entirely of fish throughout the year, though during the rigour and frosts of winter they betake themselves to the estuaries of tidal rivers, where their food of molluscs and shore-haunting creatures are daily replenished by the tides. Kingfishers are among the most persistent of trout-stream poachers, and as many as eighty of these beautiful birds have been