822 OBSERVATIONS ON BIEDS. 



that these birds neither injure the goatherd nor the ^'azier, 

 but are perfectly harmless, and subsist aloiie, being nightr 

 birds, on night-insects, such as scarahcei and phalcence ; and 

 through the mouth of July, mostly on the scarabccus solsti- 

 tialls, which in niany districts abounds at that season. Those 

 that we have opened have always had their craws stuifed 

 with large night-moths and their eggs, and pieces of chaffers ; 

 nor does it anywise appear how t\iej can, weak and unarmed 

 as they seem, inflict any harm upon kine, unless they possess 

 the powers of animal magnetism, and can affect them by 

 fluttering over them. 



A fern-owl this evening (August 27) showed off in a very 

 unusual and entertaining manner, by hawking round and 

 round the circumference of my great spreading oak for 

 twenty times following, keeping mostly close to the grass, 

 but occasionally glancing up amidst the boughs of the tree. 

 This amusing bird was then in pursuit of a brood of some 

 particular J97^ff/i^?^<e belonging to the oak, of which tliere are 

 several sorts ; and exhibited on the occasion a command of 

 wing superior, I think, to that of the swallow itself. 



When a person approaches the haunt of fern-owls in an 

 evening, they continue flying round the head of the obtruder ; 

 and, by strildng their wings together above their backs, in 

 the manner that the pigeons called smiters are known to 

 do, make a smart snap ; perhaps at that time they are jealous 

 for their young ; and their noise and gesture are intended 

 by way of menace. 



Fern-owls have attachment to oaks, no doubt on account 

 of food ; for the neii" evening we saw one again several 

 times among the boughs of the same tree ; but it did not 

 skim round its stem over the grass, as on the evening before. 

 In May, these birds find the scarabceus melolontha on the 

 oak; and the scarabcBus solstitialis at midsummer. These 

 peculiar birds can only be watched and observed for two 

 hours in the twenty-four : and then in a dubious twilight, 

 an hour after sun-set, and an hour before sun-rise. 



On this day (July 14, 1789), a woman brought me two 

 eggs of a fern-owl, or eve-jarr, which she found on the verge 

 of the Hanger, to the left of the Hermitage, under a beechen 

 shrub. This person, who lives just at the foot of the Hanger, 

 seems well acquainted with these nocturnal swallows, and 



