If we leave the open fields and woods, and ramble near the coast to some retired and solitary branch of the sea, our meditations may be suddenly startled by the harsh voice of the Kingfisher, like the sound of a watchman’s rattle.  This bird is seldom seen in winter in the interior; most of his species migrate southwardly and to the sea-coast, just so far as to be within reach of the open waters.  As they subsist on the smaller kinds of fishes, they would perish with hunger, after the waters are frozen, if they did not migrate.  But the Kingfisher often remains on the coast during open winters, and may therefore be considered one of our winter-birds.

This bird is the celebrated Alcedo, or Halcyon, of the ancients, who attributed to him many apparently supernatural powers.  He was supposed to construct his nest upon the waves, on which it was made to float like a skiff.  But as the turbulence of a storm would be likely to cause its destruction, Nature had gifted him with the extraordinary power of stilling the motions of the winds and waves, during the period of incubation.  Hence the serene weather that accompanies the summer solstice was supposed to be occasioned by the benign influence of this bird, and the term “halcyon days” was applied to this period.  It is remarkable that the fable should add to these supernatural gifts the power of song, as one of the accomplishments of the Kingfisher.  These superstitions must have been very general among the ancients, and were not confined to the Greeks and Romans.  Some of the Asiatic nations still wear the skin of the Kingfisher about their persons, as a protection against both moral and physical evils; the feathers are used as love-charms; and it is believed, that, if the body of the Kingfisher be evenly fixed upon a pivot, it will turn its head to the north, like the magnetic needle.

This bird is singularly grotesque in his appearance, though not without beauty of plumage.  With his long, straight, and quadrangular bill, his short and diminutive feet and legs, and his immense head, his plumage of a handsome dusky blue, with a bluish band on the breast and a white collar around the neck,—­when this mixture of the grotesque and the beautiful is considered in connection with the singularity of his habits, we need not marvel at the superstitions connected with his history.  He sits patiently, like an angler, on a post at the head of a wharf, or on a branch of a tree that extends over the bank, and, leaning obliquely, with extended head and beak, he watches for his finny prey.  There, with the light blue sky above him and the dark blue waves beneath, nothing on the surface of the water can escape his penetrating eyes.  Quickly, with a sudden swoop, he seizes a single fish from an unsuspecting shoal, and announces his success by the peculiar sound of his rattle.