FERN OWL. 273 



They spend the day in high elevated fields and sheep-walks ; 

 but seem to descend in the night to streams and meadows, per- 

 haps for water, which their upland haunts do not afford them.* 



THE SMALLEST UNCRESTED WILLOW WREN. 



THE smallest uncrested 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 occasion an echo, 

 and is usually first heard about the 20th of March, t 



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 in- 

 jurious 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 im- 

 putation which it by no means deserves in Italy, of sucking the 

 teats of goats, whence it is called caprimulgus ; and with us, of 

 communicating a deadly disorder to cattle. But the truth of the 

 matter is, the malady above mentioned is occasioned by the 

 csstrus bovis, a dipterous insect, which lays its eggs along the 

 chines of kine, where the maggots, when hatched, eat their way 

 through the hide of the beast into the flesh, and grow to a very 

 large size. I have just talked with a man, who says, he has 

 more than once stripped calves who have died of the puckeridge ; 

 that the ail or complaint lay along the chine, where the flesh was 

 much swelled, and filled with purulent matter. Once I myself 

 saw a large rough maggot of this sort squeezed out of the back 

 of a cow. These maggots in Essex are called wormils. 



* On the 31st of January 1792 I received a bird of this species which had been recently killed 

 by a neighbouring farmer, who said that he had frequently seen it in his fields during the former 

 part of the winter ; this perhaps was an occasional straggler, which, by some accident, was 

 prevented from accompanying its companions in their migration. MAKKWICK. 



t 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 frequently 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, 1 never could dis- 

 cover more than one species, unless my greater pettychaps, sylvia hortensis of Latham, is his 

 greatest willow wren.* MAKKWICK. 



* It is pretty evident that Mr. Markwick could never have compared his birds together, or 

 attended much to their distinctive characters, as pointed out by Mr. White; otherwise he could 

 not fail to have distinguished them. F,D. 



T 



