OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 395 
mid-summer. These peculiar birds can only be watched and 
observed for two hours in the twenty-four ; and then in dubious 
twilight an hour after sunset and an hour before sunrise. 
On this day (July 14, 1789) a woman brought me two eggs of 
a fern-owl or evening-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 says she has 
often found their eggs near that place, and that they lay only 
two at atime on the bare ground. The eggs were oblong, dusky, 
and streaked somewhat in the manner of the plumage of the 
parent bird and were equal in size at each end. The dam was 
sitting on the eggs when found, which contained the rudiments 
of young, and would have been hatched perhaps in a week. 
From hence we may see the time of their breeding, which cor- 
responds pretty well with that of the swift, as does also the period 
of their arrival. LEach species is usually seen about the beginning 
of May. Each breeds but once in a summer ; each lays only two 
eggs. 
July 4, 1790. The woman who brought me two fern-owl’s eggs 
last year on July 14, on this day produced me two more, one of 
which had been laid this morning, as appears plainly, because there 
was only one in the nest the evening before. They were found, as 
last July, on the verge of the down above the hermitage under a 
beechen shrub, on the naked ground. Last year those eggs were 
full of young, just ready to be hatched. 
These circumstances point out the exact time when these curious 
nocturnal migratory birds lay their eggs and hatch their young. 
Fern-owls, like snipes, stone-curlews, and some other birds, make no 
nest. Birds that build on the ground do not make much of nests. 
——W HITE. 
No author that I am acquainted with has given so accurate and 
pleasing an account of the manners and habits of the goat-sucker 
as Mr. White, taken entirely from his own observations. Its being 
a nocturnal bird has prevented my having many opportunities of 
observing it. I suspect that it passes the day in concealment amidst 
the dark and shady gloom of deep-wooded dells, or as they are 
called here gills ; having more than once seen it roused from such 
solitary places by my dogs, when shooting in the daytime. I have 
also sometimes seen it in an evening, but not long enough to take 
