- 7 - case more talkative, ie. when a group occurs. (The group hypothesis applied to birds.) Find an unusually dense large tree, in a normally dense high forest, and there will be your pair of kingfishers. A bird will sit for a long time on high perch in the foliage without moving a muscle. Generally very quiet also. Seen chasing and intimidating Zosterops several times; confusion chorus heard. Halcyon chloris Saipan, Tinian No differences noted in behavior on two islands. Food: Large insects or small animals. Stomachs generally contain large beetles, and most often - large locusts. On Tinian 12 Apr, I shot at a bird that was sitting on a horiz limb overhanging a c cliff. It had a House Mouse in its bill. I missed the bird, but it dropped the mouse, which I could have made into a very nice specimen except that the skull was pulverized. It was still warm, and undoubtedly the kingfisher had caught it. Similarly on Saipan, 21 Apr one was sitting on a telephone wire just as the shrikes do in the states. It had a skink in its mouth, a full grown skink. This time I collected the bird and lost the prey. This species has an amazing habit - that of harrying Zosterops. The Zosterop flock flock has a flock alarm note much like that of the bush-tit, which I have only heard when a kingfisher comes near the Zosterops. I have never seen them catch one of the small birds, but the number of times I have caught them at-it-convinces attempting it convinces me that it must be the regular thing. So far no bird remains in stomachs, however. The kingfisher can travel very rapidly at such times. It will dash into a dense acacia tree like a sharp-shinned hawk, will perch and sit very still for a long time, before trying again for a Zosterops. The latter birds keep up their "confusion" chorus, although it diminishes, only to burst out with full vigor when the kingfisher takes fli- another flight. Here, as in all its other hunting, the Kingfisher uses the shrike technique - of sitting very still waiting for its prey to move, then making a swift dash for it. A further note - Saipan 3 Sep 45, reveals more of the feeding habit: In the evening I was sitting on the porch of the Officer's club at the 148th having a whiskey and coke. The porch has a fringe of acacias in front of it. It was nearing darkness, but a kingfisher in the acacia seemed to be in his busiest time of day. He was foraging out from a fixed perch on an acacia limb, in flycatcher fashion - ie, a rapid dash after some item of food, then slower return to the original perch, where he would sit motionless except for scratching and fluffing out his feathers occasionally. (Most of these birds have louse flies - the young are especially heavily infested.) Most of the flights took him to the periphery of a certain acacia, where he seemed to be picking large insects off the foliage. It was therefore not aerial flycatching - but did involve hovering in front of the foliage. Resembles Mot-mot greatly. I have not seen Kingfishers catch prey from a perch on a telephone wire or bare limb over a field (shrike perches) - but the they must surely do it or else they are wasting a great deal of time sitting in those places.