OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 395 



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, 

 and streaked somewhat in the manner 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 cor- 

 responds 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 4, 1790. The woman who brought me two fern owl's eggs 

 last year on July 14, 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. 



No author that I am acquainted with has given so accurate and 

 pleasing an account of the manners and habits of the goat-sucker 

 as Mr. White, taken entirely from his own observations. Its being 

 a nocturnal bird has prevented my having many opportunities of 

 observing it. I suspect that it passes the day in concealment amidst 

 the dark and shady gloom of deep-wooded dells, or as they are 

 called here gills ; having more than once seen it roused from such 

 solitary places by my dogs, when shooting in the daytime. I have 

 also sometimes seen it in an evening, but not long enough to take 



