266 THE BIRDS OF YORKSHIRE. 



Thomas Allis, 1844, wrote as follows : — 



Caprimulgus europasus. — The Nightjar — This bird is noticed as 

 becoming more rare near Halifax and Hebden Bridge ; in other districts 

 it is by no means rare in favourable localities ; on two occasions I have 

 attempted to rear the young, but, though I kept them alive for several 

 weeks, feeding them on moths, beetles, and animal food, I could never 

 get them to pick their food, but was always obliged to open their mouths 

 and insert it, when the food was readily swallowed, — their habit being 

 to take food on the wing, they seem to have no idea of picking it when 

 at rest. W. Eddison says he has a nest of three eggs taken from a 

 nest of four found near West Nab ; the usual number of eggs is con- 

 sidered to be two ; I have never found the nest myself, but it never 

 occurred to me to see more than a pair of young together. 



The Nightjar or, as it is commonly called in Yorkshire, 

 the Goatsucker, is one of our latest summer visitants, seldom 

 making its appearance before the first or, more often, the 

 second week of May. The date of the earliest arrival of which 

 I am aware is i6th April 1883, when one was reported by Mr. 

 J. Lister on Langwith Moor in the south of the county. It 

 leaves in September, some individuals remaining until October ; 

 the latest lingerers were a pair at Heslington Hall, near 

 York, one of which was picked up in a starved condition in 

 the third week of November 1889. 



The bird is nowhere very abundant, and is decidedly local 

 in its choice of breeding quarters. The situations that it 

 chiefly resorts to are the moor edges and the borders of wood- 

 lands near the moors, fir woods, and the fell sides of the North 

 and West Ridings. It occurs in suitable places in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Sheffield, Barnsley, Huddersfield, Wakefield, 

 Doncaster, Otley, Ripon, and the upper portions of the 

 river valleys running from the west and north-west of the 

 county. It also nests annually in the dales, and in the vicinity 

 of the North Riding moors, near Scarborough, Whitby, 

 Pickering, Wensleydale, Teesdale, Arkengarthdale, Swaledale, 

 and Sedbergh, the wastes and commons near York, and 

 the Cleveland dales ; favourite haunts, where I have found 

 the eggs, being Scotch fir woods where the ground is over- 

 grown with short heather. On 20th August 1901, six were 

 seen together on the border of the moor at Scarth Nick in 



