ON BIRDS. 355 



several sorts ; and exhibited on the occasion a com- 

 mand 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 toge- 

 ther 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 scarab&ns melolontha on the oak ; and 

 the scarabceus solstitialis at midsummer. These pe- 

 culiar birds can only be watched and observed for 

 two hours in the twenty-four: and then in a dubious 

 twilight, an hour after sun-set, and an hour before 

 sun-rise. 



On this day (July 14, 1789), a woman brought 

 me two eggs of a fern-owl, or eve-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 of the Hanger, seems well 

 acquainted with these nocturnal swallows, and says 

 she has often* found their eggs near that place, and 

 that they lay only two at a time on the bare ground. 

 The eggs were oblong, dusky, and streaked some- 

 what in the manner of the plumage of the parent 

 bird, and were equal in size at each end. The dam 

 was sitting on the eggs when found, which contained 

 the rudiments of young, and would have been hatched, 

 perhaps, in a week. From hence we may see the time 

 of their breeding, which corresponds pretty well with 

 A a 2 



