72 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 



young; and their noise and gesture are intended by way of 

 menace. 



Fern-owls seem to have an 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 Scardbceus melolontha on the oak ; and the 

 Scaralccus solstitialis at midsummer; but they can only be 

 watched and observed for two hours in the twenty-four ; and 

 then in a dubious twilight an hour after sunset and an hour 

 before sunrise. 



On this day (July 14, 1789) a woman brought me two eggs of 

 a fern-fowl 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 somewhat 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 rudi- 

 ments of young, and would have been hatched perhaps in :i 

 week. From hence we may see the time of their breeding, 

 which corresponds pretty well with that of the swift, as does 

 also the period of their arrival. Each species is usually seen 

 about the beginning of May. Each breeds but once in a sum- 

 mer ; and each lays only two eggs. 



July 4, 1790. The woman who brought me two fern-owls' 

 eggs last year on July 14, on this day produced me two more, 

 one of which had been laid this morning, as appears plainly, 

 because there was only one in the nest the evening before. 

 They were found, as last July, on the verge of the down above 

 the hermitage under a beechen shrub, on the naked ground. 

 Last year those eggs were full of young, and just ready to be 

 hatched. 



These circumstances point out the exact time when these 

 curious nocturnal migratory birds lay their eggs, and hatch their 

 young. Fern-owls, like snipes, stone-curlews, and some other 



