308 Mr. Jenyns on the Ornithology of Cambridgeshire. 
tract their stay at that place so much beyond its usual limit I. 
am unable to say, but the fact itself I regularly noticed during a 
period of several years that I was in the habit. of residing there 
for the summer months. Possibly they may. in some measure be 
influenced by the cathedral and other old buildings. adjacent, in 
the holes and crannies of which these birds. meet with a retreat 
peculiarly congenial to their habits, as appears by the immense 
numbers that annually resort thither in the early part of the 
season *. 
Genus XXIX. CAPRIMULGUS, Linn.. 
Sp.84. C. europzeus, Temm. Man. d’Ornith. p. 436. 
GoaTsucKER.—I have occasionally observed these birds about 
Ely, and also in the neighbourhood of Bottisham, but at the 
last mentioned place they have not of late years appeared in such 
plenty as formerly. Like the rest of this order they are 
migratory, arriving about the beginning of June and departing 
in September. In the dusk of the evening they utter a singular 
chattering noise somewhat resembling that of a spinning-wheel, by 
which they may easily be distinguished. From an examination 
of the stomach, their food appears to. consist of the larger night- 
flying Phalene, particularly those belonging to the Linnean sec- 
tion Noctua, and the various species of Phryganea. It is also 
probable that during a short part of the season they derive much 
of their support from the Midsummer Dor (Melolontha solsti- 
tialis) as I have seen them hawking about in places where these 
insects were abundant. 
* White, in his Natural History of Selborne, observes that swallows are seen later at 
Oxford than elsewhere, and enquires whether it may not be owing to the vast massy buildings 
of that place. See his twenty-third Letter to Pennant. 
