MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



sparrow can accommodate himself without 

 an effort to the bustle of towns, and can 

 dispute for grains of corn under the horses' 

 hoofs in Cheapside ; the rook can follow 

 close the ploughman's heels, in search of 

 worms turned up by the share in the 

 furrows ; but the night-jar lives aloof among 

 the solitary fern-wastes, and flies amain 

 before the intrusion of our boisterous 

 humanity. 



" Fern-owls " the country people here- 

 abouts call them ; and very owl-like indeed 

 they are in outer appearance, with their soft 

 mottled plumage, all brown and grey and 

 melting white, as is the wont of nocturnal 

 or crepuscular creatures. But they are not 

 owls at all by descent, for all that, being 

 in reality big fly-hunting cousins of the 

 swifts and the humming-birds. All birds 

 that hawk after insects on the wing have 

 a wide gaping mouth ; the house martins 

 have it, and the swallows, and the swifts ; 

 but in the night-jar this width of gape is 



4 



