26 FERN-OWL. 



I believe its very peculiar note is uttered sitting, and never 

 on the wing. I have seen it on a turf-stack with its throat 

 nearly touching the turf, and its tail elevated, and have 

 heard it in this situation utter its call, which resembles the 

 birr of the mole-cricket, an insect very abundant in this 

 neighbourhood. I have almost been induced to think this 

 noise serves as a decoy to the male mole-cricket, this being 

 occasionally found in the craw of these birds when shot. 

 Those who may not be acquainted with the cry of the bird 

 or the insect, may imagine the noise of an auger boring 

 oak, or any hard wood, continued, and not broken off, as is 

 the noise of the auger, from the constant changing of the 

 hands. The eggs of the fern-owl have frequently been 

 brought me by boys : they are only two in number, grey- 

 ish white, clouded and blotched with deeper shades of the 

 same colour ; the hen lays them on the soil, which is either 

 peat, or a fine soft blue sand, in which she merely makes 

 a slight concavity, but no nest whatever. The first cry 

 of the fern-owl is the signal for the night-flying moths to 

 appear on the wing, or rather, the signal for the entomolo- 

 gist's expecting them.* 



The bird is plentiful on every heathy district in the 

 neighbourhood. On Highdown heath Mr. Stafford shot 

 forty-seven in a very short space of time. 



* The fern owl grasps a branch in a different way from other birds, the feet 

 not being placed side by side on the branch an arrangement which other birds 

 adopt, and which places the body and branch at right angles with each other 

 but one before the other, so that the body of the bird is parallel with the branch. 

 It is also to be remarked, that if the twig or bough is slightly ascending, this 

 curious bird will almost invariably perch with his tail upwards. I have no 

 hesitation in saying that moths constitute its usual food, and these it swallows 

 entire and alive. I have known instances of their re-ascending the throat, 

 crawling out of the mouth and escaping, after one of these birds bad been shot 

 by moonlight. E. N. 



