OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 393 
They spend the day in high elevated fields and sheep-walks ; but 
seem to descend in the night to streams and meadows, perhaps for 
water, which their upland haunts do not afford them.— WHITE. 
On the 31st of January, 1792, I received a bird of this species 
which had been recently killed by a neighbouring farmer, who said 
he had frequently seen it in his fields during the former part of the 
winter: this perhaps was an occasional straggler, which by some 
accident was prevented from accompanying its companions in their 
migration. MARKWICK. 
THE SMALLEST UNCRESTED WILLOW WREN. 
The smallest uncrested willow wren, or chiff-chaff, is the next 
early summer bird which we have remarked ; it utters two sharp 
piercing notes, so loud in hollow woods, as to occasion an echo, 
and is usually first heard about the 20th of March.—WHITE. 
This bird, which Mr. White calls the smallest willow wren or 
chiff-chaff, makes its appearance very early in spring, and is very 
common with us, but I cannot make out the three different species 
of willow wrens which he assures us he has discovered. Ever 
since the publication of his History of Selborne I have used my 
utmost endeavours to discover his three birds, but hitherto without 
success. I have frequently shot the bird which “haunts only the 
tops of trees, and makes a sibilous noise,” even in the very act of 
uttering that sibilous note, but it always proved to be the common 
willow wren or his chiff-chaff. In short, I never could discover 
more than one species, unless my greater petty-chaps, Sy/vza 
hortensis of Latham, is his greatest willow wren.—MARKWICK. 
FERN-OWL, OR GOAT-SUCKER. 
The country people have a notion that the fern-owl, or churn- 
owl, or eve-jarr, which they also call a puckeridge, is very injurious 
to weanling calves, by inflicting as it strikes at them, the fatal dis- 
temper known to cow-leeches by the name of puckeridge. Thus 
does this harmless ill-fated bird fall under a double imputation 
which it by no means deserves—in Italy, of sucking the teats of 
goats, whence it is called capr7mulgus ; and with us, of communi- 
