A Cobwebbed Kingfisher In what queer, unlikely places birds, especially
young birds, will appear! The other day, in a garden famous for its population of birds, a young kingfisher was found in an outhouse, gagged and bound with cobwebs. The theory was that it had been trying to rob the spiders of their flies, but it is more likely that it flew among the webs in an effort to escape from the queer place where it found itself. Two years ago, at Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, the padre of an English church showed me the holes he had made in the roof in order to give a loophole of escape to the humming birds. These busy little birds flying into the church, which had many open doors and windows, would try to escape up- wards and not infrequently fell to the ground, having their wings altogether clogged by cobwebs. Incidentally, many species of birds are as fond of eating spiders as flies. The garden where the bound kingfisher was found is not directly on a stream, but a pair have been in the habit of building in holes in a steep chalk bank. Both they and the moorhen will on occasion build quite a long way from water.
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