HERONS GOATSUCKER. 73 



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 1 . I have often 

 thought that those vast extent of fens have 

 never been sufficiently 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 cuprimulgus , 

 (the goat- sucker,) 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 sit- 

 ting on a bough ; and I have for many an 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; 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 

 cats pur. You will credit me, I hope, when I 

 assure you, that, as my neighbours were assembled 

 in an hermitage on the side of a steep hill where 

 we drank tea, one of these churn-owls came and 

 settled on the cross of that little straw edifice and 

 began to chatter, and continued his note for many 



1 Cressi-hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. 



