414 The Natural History of Selborne 



mostly on the Scarab* us solstitialis^ which in many districts abounds at 

 that season. Those that we have opened, have always had their 

 craws stuffed with large night moths and their eggs, and pieces of 

 chaffers : nor does it anywise appear how they can, weak and un- 

 armed as they seem, inflict any harm upon kine, unless they possess 

 the powers of animal magnetism and can affect them by fluttering 

 over them. 



A fern-owl this evening (August 27) showed off in a very unusual 

 and entertaining manner, by hawking round and round the circum- 

 ference of my great spreading oak for twenty times following, keep- 

 ing mostly close to the grass, but occasionally glancing up amidst 

 the boughs of the tree. This amusing bird was then in pursuit of a 

 brood of some particular phalasna belonging to the oak, of which 

 there are several sorts ; and exhibited on the occasion a command 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 strik- 

 ing their wings together above their backs, in the manner that the 

 pigeons called smiters are known to do, made 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*us melolontha on the oak, and the Scarabxus solstitialis at 

 mid-summer. 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 14, 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, 



