OF NATURE. 430 



THE SMALLEST UNCRESTED WILLOW WREN. 



The smallest tin crested willow wren, or chiff chaf, is the 

 next early summer bird which we have remarked ; it utters 

 two sharp piercing notes, so loud in hollow woods, as to occa- 

 sion an echo, and is usually first heard about the 20th of 

 March. WHITE. 



This bird which Mr. White calls the smallest willow wren 

 or chiff chaf. makes its appearance very early in the spring, 

 and is very common with us ; but I cannot make out the 

 three different species of willow wrens which he assures us 

 he has discovered. Ever since the publication of his History 

 of Selborne I have used my utmost endeavours to discover 

 his three birds, but hitherto without success. I have fre- 

 quently shot the bird which " haunts only the tops of trees 

 " and makes a sibilous noise," even in the very act of uttering 

 that sibilous note, but it always proved to be the common 

 willow wren or his chiff chaf. In short, I never could dis- 

 cover more than one species, unless my greater pettychaps, 

 nylvia hortensis of Latham, is his greatest willow wren*. 

 MARKWICK. 



FERN OWL, OR GOAT SUCKER. 



The country people have a notion that the fern owl, or 

 churn owl, or eve-jarr, which they also call a puckeridge, is 

 very injurious to weanling calves, by inflicting, as it strikes 

 at them, the fatal distemper known to cow-leeches by the 

 name of puckeridge. Thus does this harmless ill-fated bird 

 fall under a double imputation which it by no means deserves 

 in Italy, of sucking the teats of goats, whence it is called 



* [" Mr. Markwick's experience could not have been great, or he was 

 always the victim of a mistake. The accuracy of White's observations 

 and discrimination of the three species of Willow-wren is beyond all 

 question." A. N.] 



