OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 301 



its stem over the grass, as on the evening before. In May, 

 these birds find the scarab&us melolontha on the oak ; and the 

 scarabcEus solstitial^ at midsummer. These peculiar birds can 

 only be watched and observed for two hours in the twenty- 

 four ; and then in a 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 eve-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 corresponds pretty well with 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, 1 790. 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, and 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 

 birds, make no nest. Birds that build on the ground do not 

 make much of nests. * 



* 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 M 

 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 day-time. I have also sometimes seen it in an 



