420 ULULA BRACHYOTUS. 



turned my attention to the range of their breeding ; 

 for, previous to this, I also held the opinion, that they 

 had commenced their migration southward. The young 

 was discovered by one of my dogs pointing it ; and, on 

 the following year, by searching at the proper season, 

 two nests were found with five eggs. They were 

 formed upon the ground among the heath ; the bottom 

 of the nest scraped until the fresh earth appeared, on 

 which the eggs were placed, without any lining or other 

 accessory covering. When approaching the nest or 

 young, the old birds fly or hover round, uttering a 

 shrill cry, and snapping with their bills. They will 

 then alight at a short distance, survey the aggressor, and 

 again resume their flight and cries. The young are 

 barely able to fly by the 12th of August, and appear to 

 leave the nest sometime before they are able to rise 

 from the ground. I have taken them, on that great 

 day, to sportsmen, squatted on the heath like young 

 black-game, at no great distance from each other, and 

 always attended by the parent birds. Last year, 1831, 

 I found them in their old haunts, to which they appear 

 to return very regularly ; and the female, with a young- 

 bird, was procured ; the young could only fly for sixty 

 or seventy yards." 



Mr Swainson states, as one of the characteristic qua- 

 lities of his " systematic or closet naturalist," that, 

 " ascending higher and higher in his generalizations, he 

 concentrates the facts, spread into an octavo volume 

 of zoological anecdotes and field remarks, within the 

 compass of a few pages." At this rate he would con- 

 dense the above observations respecting the habits and 

 propagation of the Ulula brachyotus into three lines 

 at most : — Arrives in Britain in October, departs in 



