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taking refuge in every bushy tree by the way. Their egg-sucking 
crimes cause them to be persecuted by gamekeepers, which is 
rather a pity, as both Jay and Magpie are very ornamental to the 
scenery they inhabit. No doubt all the Crow kind do good by 
devouring what would become prejudicial if left alone. The Jay 
is generally called “Jay Piet.” 
A Nutcracker (Vucifraga caryocatactes) was seen in Nether- 
witton wood, Northumberland, in the autumn of rites by Captain 
Robert Mitford, R.N. 
THE HoopED Crow 
I have only heard of twice near here, though common enough in 
many parts of England. One was shot in 1880 near Seascale. It 
is a powerful and fierce bird, much resembling the Carrion Crow 
in its nature and habits. Some good authorities have lately 
affirmed these two birds to be merely varieties of the same 
species. 
Amongst the FissirosTRES, or Cleft-billed birds, passing over 
the commoner species, such as the Swallow, we find one of the 
most curious and interesting of our British birds, viz.— 
THE NIGHTJAR, 
This is a bird with a multitude of names, and which has been disliked and 
regarded as a bird of evil omen from the earliest times. Certainly its habits 
and appearance are peculiar and striking. The inordinately large eye, the 
minute beak, being a mere entrance to the enormous mouth with its bristly 
appendages—its noiseless, ghost-like flight, and its peculiar low jar-r-r-ing note, 
heard only in the twilight of evening, would naturally impress a superstitious 
people unfavourably. Aristotle calls it Azgothelas, accusing it of sucking 
goats, and adding that the teat afterwards becomes dry and the animal blind. 
4Glian and Pliny say the same, and the superstition has not yet disappeared 
altogether. Hence its name of Goatsucker; though in this country it was 
supposed to attack cows, and also to have the power to inflict on calves a fatal 
distemper by striking at them. The Puckeridge disease was really caused by 
maggots laid in the skin of the calf by a kind of fly ( Zstrus bovis), and if the 
Night-jar was seen striking near them, no doubt it was making a snap at the 
insect which annoyed the animal. 
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