Shanghai, Feb, 14.—Our Little Blue Kingfisher is a hardworking bird and he has to use much ingenuity in plying his trade, more particularly in winter, as this incident which took place during my absence in Weihaiwei will illustrate. The Kingfisher has to meet many obstacles but the greatest of all of these is ice: I have actually seen one of these birds, when the creeks were only thinly covered, crashing his body down on to the ice to break it, but if it gets worse than that he must move off to the seacoast where the water is not frozen... unless he can find a convenient fishing-hole, as in the story related to me by a friend this week. We know that the Esquimaux fish through holes in the ice and there is no reason why a bird should not do the same, except that he has a more difficult task, being' without line and hook! it is Obvious that fish will swim up to a hole to get light arid air... and thus it was that the Kingfisher seen by my friend in Jessfield Park was perched above the lily-pond watching a hole and swooping down to make a catch whenever a fish approached it; so fascinated was the observer by this unusual sight that he took his wife back to the Park in the afternoon to see the bird at work.... but alas, they found only the dead body of the bird, trapped and drowned beneath the ice through which the brilliant blue feathers could be seen shining: the Kingfisher is not a true diving bird, he merely dips into the water to grab his fish when it comes to the surface, and this bird took the risk once too often... probably being driven by thunger into too deep a dive, And so died a brave little fisherman, a victim to the perils of his trade. j
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.