72 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



to endeavour to trace from whence they come, and to enquire 

 why they make so very short a stay. 



In your account of your error with regard to the two species 

 of herons, you incidentally gave me great entertainment in your 

 description of the heronry at Cressi-hall, which is a curiosity I 

 never could manage to see. Fourscore nests of such a bird on 

 one tree is a rarity which I would ride half as many miles to 

 have a sight of. Pray be sure to tell me in your next whose 

 seat Cressi-hall is, and near what town it lies.* I have often 

 thought that those vast extents of fens have never been suffi- 

 ciently explored. If half a dozen gentlemen, furnished with a 

 good strength of water-spaniels, were to beat them over for a 

 week, they would certainly find more species. 



There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied 

 more than that of the caprimulgus (the 

 goat-sucker),f as it is a wonderful and 

 curious creature : but I have always 

 found that though sometimes it may 

 chatter as it flies, as I know it does, 

 yet in general it utters its jarring note 

 sitting on a bough ; and I have for 

 many a half hour watched it as it sat 

 with its under mandible quivering, and 



particularly this summer. It perches usually on a bare twig, 

 with its head lower than its tail, in an attitude well expressed by 

 your draughtsman in the folio British Zoology, This bird is 

 most punctual in beginning its song exactly at the close of day ; J 

 so exactly that I have known it strike up more than once or 

 twice just at the report of the Portsmouth evening gun, which 

 we can hear when the weather is still. It appears to me past all 

 doubt that its notes are formed by organic impulse, by the 

 powers of the parts of its windpipe, formed for sound, just as 



* Cressi-hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. 



t A better name is motheater (phalcenivora europcea), the whole structure of the birds of this 

 genus being especially adapted for preying on nocturnal insects. ED. 



J I remember once hearing it, however, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, during bright 

 sunshine, but such an occurrence is very unusual. Perhaps it may be as well to remark here, 

 in reference to an erroneous statement in Capt. Brown's edition of this work, that our bird is 

 by no means identical with the whip-poor-will motheater of America (phaloenwora vocifera), a 

 species peculiar to that continent, and common in summer in many parts of the United States, 

 where it literally makes the woods resound at night with its perpetual repetition of the note 

 from which it has been named, pronounced in a very clear and distinct manner, the chief stress 

 being laid on the first and last syllables. Our bird has only the notes above mentioned by Mr. 

 Whitethe loud spinning-wheel burr, and an occasional faint squeak, which latter is only uttered 

 on the wing. ED. 



