400 OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 



perfectly harmless, and subsist alone, being night birds, on night 

 insects, such as scarabai and phalcence ; and through the month 

 of July mostly on the scarabxus solstitialis, which in many districts 

 abounds at that season. Those that we have opened, have always 

 had their craws stuffed with large night moths and their eggs, and 

 pieces of chaffers : nor does it anywise appear how they can, weak 

 and unarmed as they seem, inflict any harm upon kine, unless they 

 possess the powers of animal magnetism and can affect them by 

 fluttering over them. 



A fern-owl, this evening (August 27th) showed off in a very 

 unusual and entertaining manner, by hawking round and round 

 the circumference of my great spreading oak for twenty times 

 following, keeping mostly close to the grass, but occasionally 

 glancing up amidst the boughs of the tree. This amusing bird 

 was then in pursuit of a brood of some particular phalaena belonging 

 to the oak, of which there are several sorts ; and exhibited on the 

 occasion a command of wing superior, I think, to that of the 

 swallow itself. 



When a person approaches the haunt of fern-owls in an evening, 

 they continue flying round the head of the obtruder ; and by 

 striking their wings together above their backs, in the manner 

 that the pigeons called smiters are known to do, make a smart 

 snap ; perhaps at that time they are jealous for their young, and 

 their noise and gesture are intended by way of menace. 



Fern-owls have attachment to oaks, no doubt on account of 

 food ; for the next evening we saw one again several times among 

 the boughs of the same tree \ but it did not skim round its stem 

 over the grass, as on the evening before. In May these birds find 

 the Scarabceus melolontha on the oak, and the Scarabczus sohtitialis 

 at midsummer. 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 i4th, 1 789), 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 01 the Hanger, seems well acquainted 

 with these nocturnal swallows, and says she has often found their 



