Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 Excerpt: ... my lap I was delighted. They were the quaintest young birds I ever had handled; the first of their kind. No wonder the snowy white eggs of the Kingfisher are so very oblong. They have to be to allow the growth of that enormous bill, for enormous it was, even on the babies. The little fellows had eyes as large in proportion as their elders, crests of blue coming, a tiny white dot before either eye, broad collars of white, steel-blue wings and backs, tail and primary wing-feathers banded with white, and white breasts touched with blue below the crop. The old birds were exactly like them, save that the breast of the female was russet where that of the male was blue. Perhaps these birds seemed slightly different to me from any others I have worked with before or since, because they did so exactly what I hoped they would do. Still I never have seen any living or pictured Kingfishers with quite such heavy big beaks, such big eyes, such flaring crests. They seemed to me larger and finer in every way; it may be imagination, yet I feel sure they were. You can compare their pictures with others you have seen, then decide for yourselves. At the first picturing of the babies, I tried twice, securing good likenesses of them. The second time, some days later and near the time when they would be going, I was assisted by Raymond Miller, a young friend of mine who was born for a naturalist. While focussing on these birds I explained to Raymond that two were a small brood; frequently there were seven and eight in a family. I said to him: "Wouldn't it be splendid if we had seven in this picture?" "I don't know," answered Raymond dubiously; "if there were seven, people would get so mixed looking at all of them, they never would see how cunning only tw...
