82 HERONS GOAT-SUCKER. 



worth your pains to endeavour to trace from whence 

 they come, and to inquire why they make so very 

 short a stay. 



In your account of your error with regard to the 

 two species of herons, you incidentally gave me great 

 entertainment in your description of the heronry 

 at Cressi-hall, which is a curiosity I never could 

 manage to see. Fourscore nests of such a bird on 

 one tree is a rarity which I would ride half as 

 many miles to have a sight of. Pray he sure to tell 

 me in your next whose seat Cressi-hall is, and near 

 what town it lies.* I have often thought that 

 those vast extents of fens have never heen suffi- 

 ciently explored. If half-a-dozen gentlemen, fur- 

 nished with a good strength of water spaniels, were 

 to beat them over for a week, they would certainly 

 find more species. 



There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I 

 have studied more than that of the caprimulgus, 

 (the goat-sucker,) as it is a wonderful and curious 

 creature ; but I have always found, that though 

 sometimes it may chatter as it flies, as I know it 

 does, yet in general it utters its jarring note sitting 

 on a bough ; and I have for many an half hour 

 watched it as it sat with its under mandible quiver- 

 ing, and particularly this summer. It perches usually 

 on a bare twig, with its head lower than its tail, in 

 an attitude well expressed by your draughtsman in 

 the folio British Zoology. This bird is most punctual 

 in beginning its song exactly at the close of day; 

 so exactly, that I have known it strike up more than 

 once or twice just at the report of the Portsmouth 

 evening gun, which we can hear when the weather 

 is still. It appears to me past all doubt, that its 

 notes are formed by organic impulse, by the powers 



* Cressi-hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. 



