“Tr-r-r-at-tat-tat!” rattled another bird from over the river bank.

“Those must both be Woodpeckers,” said the children; “for both noises are like hammering.”

“Yes,” continued Nat, “and I see the one who made the rattle.  It is a Woodpecker with a very big head and bob tail, and sort of gray with black straps in front.  See, uncle!  He is on a branch of that dead tree, right over the river—­there, he has fallen off into the water!”

The Doctor smiled as he said:  “Here is another case of mistaken identity—­very much like Dodo with her rare Meadowlark!  This bird is a Kingfisher, who did not fall into the water, but dived in after the fish for which he sat watching.”

“So some wood birds eat fish, as well as the Osprey that we saw at the beach; but how do they chew them, Uncle Roy?”

“They do not chew them.  If the fish is not too large, they swallow it whole, and very funny faces they make sometimes in doing so.  If it is too large, they beat it against a branch and tear it before eating.  As they live on fish, they make their home near water, and only travel south when the rivers freeze.”

“Do they build nests in trees?” asked Dodo.

“No; they burrow tunnels in the earth of river banks, and put their nests at the end of them, just as the Bank Swallow does; only the Kingfisher’s tunnel is much larger, and his nest is not nicely lined with feathers—­the young often have no softer bed than a few fish-bones.”

[Illustration:  Belted Kingfisher.]

The Belted Kingfisher

Length about thirteen inches.

A long, bristling crest; bill longer than head, stout, straight, and sharp.

Leaden-blue above, with many white bands and spots on the short, square tail and long, pointed wings.

Below white, with a blue belt across the breast, and the female with a brown belt also.

A Citizen of North America.

Belonging to no useful guild, but a rather startling, amusing neighbor, who always minds Ins own business and is an industrious fisherman.

“What was the other bird, who cried, ‘kuk kuk!’ on the outside of the woods?  There, it is calling again!  I’m sure that it is a Woodpecker!”

“Wrong again—­it is a Cuckoo; the Yellow-billed one, I think, for the voice is louder and harsher than that of his Black-billed brother.”

[Illustration:  Yellow-Billed Cuckoo.]

“What! a little blue and white bird like the one that bobs out of mother’s carved clock at home?  Oh, do let us try to find it!  But this bird didn’t say ‘cuckoo’; it only cackled something like a Hen when she is tired of sitting.”

“The clock Cuckoo is an imitation of the merry, heedless English bird, who lays her eggs in the wrong nests, as our Cowbird does.  The Yellow-billed Cuckoo is quite different, being long, slender, and graceful, and a very patient parent—­even though the nest she builds is rather a poor thing, made of a few twigs piled so loosely in a bush that the pale-green eggs sometimes drop out.