Terns are especially addicted to pieces of water that are rapidly drying up, for under such conditions they find the creatures upon which they prey literally jostling one another. After the water has been run off from a canal, dozens of terns congregate at each hollow in the canal-bed in which water lies.
The tern, when it plunges after its quarry, takes great care not to wet its wings. Its habit is to drop from a height of about twenty feet head foremost. In the course of the plunge the head and body are often submerged, but, I think, never the wings; during the operation, these are held almost vertically. So assiduously was this tern plying his profession that he made thirty dives in about six minutes.
While he was thus employed a pied kingfisher (_Ceryle rudis_) appeared on the scene and took up a position on one of three neem trees that grew beside the tank. After sitting thus for a few seconds, he too began to seek for food. Save that both he and the tern drop from a height of about twenty feet into the water after their quarry, there is but little similarity between their movements. The tern sails gracefully along on pinions which move but slowly, while the kingfisher flies a little way, then remains stationary in the air for a few seconds on rapidly vibrating wings, with both tail and bill pointing downwards, so that the shape of the bird is an inverted V with the apex at the neck. It then either dives or passes on to another spot where it again hovers. Frequently it makes as if it were going to dive, then seems to change its mind, for it checks itself during its drop and passes on.
When the kingfisher was hovering in the air, the tern approached and looked as though he were going to attack him. However, he contented himself by skimming past very close to the “pied fish tiger.” This appeared to disconcert the latter, who went back to the neem tree and rested there for a few minutes. Meanwhile, the tern flew away. The moment he had departed the kingfisher renewed his piscatorial efforts and took up a position about twenty feet above the water almost directly over the spot where the ducks were floating. I thought this rather foolish on the part of the kingfisher, because the ducks must necessarily scare away all the fish from that part of the water. However, the little fisherman possessed more sense than I gave him credit for. He had not been hovering for thirty seconds when he plunged into the water and emerged with a large object in his bill. With this he flew to the muddy border of the pond. Then, by means of my field glasses, I saw that his quarry consisted of a frog about two and a half inches long including the legs. The kingfisher experienced some little difficulty in swallowing the frog. He had it crosswise in his beak and the problem that confronted him was to get the frog lengthwise head foremost in his bill without releasing the nimble little amphibian and thus giving it a chance of escape. After a little manœuvring the kingfisher got the frog in the desired position, and, having held it thus for a few seconds, swallowed it.