Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/62

46 Its beak is coral red and three inches long, its shirt front spotless white, its vest and also its whole head and neck rich chestnut brown, its shoulders glossy black, and the rest of its wings, back and tail, brilliant blue. When it flies, a broad white band opens on its wings. The White-breasted Kingfisher is a bird of gardens and hence fond of Bombay. Wherever there is anything like a tank, or pond, or even a shallow well with a tree overhanging the water, there you will find it. It will even visit a garden tub and enjoy a plunge bath. The two conditions it asks for are shade and water. Doubtless it enjoys these itself, but that is a secondary reason for its seeking them. The primary reason is that little frogs enjoy them and it enjoys little frogs, for, though a member of a fishing caste, it is itself but a poor fisher. It is happily not fastidious. Water insects, crabs, anything in short that it can catch and swallow, is welcome. A friend of mine introduced one into an immense aviary, in which he kept a great variety of small birds, and forthwith the little amadavats began to disappear rapidly and mysteriously. He caught the culprit at last in flagrante delicto and ejected it. The White-breasted Kingfisher lays five or six pure white eggs, during the hot season, in a hole in a bank, or in the side of a well. This bird has not a musical voice: few brilliant birds have. Its commonest cry is a rattling scream, which it utters when flying; but it has also a shrill, plaintive call, which seems to relieve the monotony of sitting alone, watching for fishes.

A far cleverer fisher is the little bird which Jerdon calls the Common Indian Kingfisher (Alcedo bengalensis), but which is now admitted to be identical