116 NIGHTJAR. 
plantation; the old bird led me to search by her dissembling 
incapacity of flight. I looked again, when it was nearly ready 
to fly. Being a night-feeder it is seldom destroyed by game- 
keepers.’ -Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, 
Devonshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, and Westmorland, contain 
localities for this bird; Wales also, and some parts of Ireland, 
as also of Scotland. In the Orkney Islands, ‘two were shot 
at Lopness, during the summer of 1810. One was killed near 
Kirkwall, by Captain Chisholm, 9th. R.V.B.; and another 
‘ was obtained at Lopness, by Mr. Strang, on the Ist. of June, 
1825.’ Mr. Dunn mentions the occurrence of one in Shetland. 
The Nightjar inhabits woods, both of old and young growth, 
and also open moors, heaths, and commons, where fern and 
brushwood afford it shelter. 
It is a migratory bird, visiting this country in the middle 
or end of May—a very late arrival; and leaving again by 
the middle or end of September, or beginning of October; 
some say so soon as the end of August: a few individuals, 
however, stay longer. Montagu records his having shot one 
in Devonshire, on the 8th. of November, 1805; and Mr. Couch 
reports that one was shot in Cornwall, on the 27th. of 
November, 1821. 
The remarkable trait in the character of the Nightjar is 
~ that it perches lengthwise, instead of crosswise, on the branch 
of a tree, generally with its head downwards, according to 
the inclination of the branch, especially while in the attitude 
of repose; during the day it crouches very close to it; its 
brown colour assimilating to that of the bark. They have 
been seen dusting themselves in the middle of a road. In 
his ‘Catalogue of the Birds of Melbourne,’ in Derbyshire, in 
the ‘Zoologist,’ page 2606, J. J. Briggs, Esq. relates that in 
1844 two of these birds were seen near Donnington Park, 
hawking for insects at mid-day, by the side of a large wood; 
which perhaps may have been rather a shady situation; and 
two other such instances are recorded in the fifteenth volume 
of the ‘Linnzan Transactions.’ Such, however, is certainly 
not their usual habit. Occasionally these birds are to be seen 
‘couchant’ on a stone heap or other eminence, and they also 
at times bask in the sun on the side of a bank or other 
such sheltered situation. They are very fearless when they 
are engaged with their young, and will glance in their fitful 
phantom way quite close by you. White of Selborne says, 
‘when a person approaches the haunt of the Fern Owls in 
