346 WHITE 



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 scarabcsus melolontha on the oak, and the 

 scarabceus solstitialis at midsummer. These peculiar birds can 

 only be watched and observed for two hours in the twenty- 

 four ; and then in dubious twilight an hour after sunset and 

 an hour before sunrise. 



On this day (July I4th, 1789), a woman brought me two 

 eggs of a fern-owl, or evening 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 man- 

 ner 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 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 summer; each lays only two eggs. 



July 4th, 1790. The woman who brought me two fern-owl's 

 eggs last year on July I4th, 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, 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 birds, make no nest. Birds that build on the ground do 

 not make much of nests. WHITE. 



