OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 299 



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.* 



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 injurious 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 imputation, 

 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 oestrus 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 w r ho 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 wornils.f 



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. 

 MARKWICK. 



* 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, I never 

 could discover more than one species, unless my greater pettichaps, 

 (sylviahortensis of Latham,) is his greatest willow-wren. MARKWICK. 



The three species are the wood-wren, sylvia sibilatrix of Bechsteinj 

 the chiff chaf, sylvia hippolais of Latham, and the hay bird, motacilla 

 trochilus of Latham. ED. 



|- This is the maggot of the breeze-fly,' oestrus bovis of Clark. They 

 prove extremely troublesome to cattle. During our residence in Fife, 



