300 OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 



The least observation and attention would convince men, 

 that these birds neither injure the goatherd nor the grazier, 

 but are perfectly harmless, and subsist alone, being night birds, 

 on night insects, such as scarabasi, and phakencB; and, through 

 the month of July, mostly on the scarabcsus solstitialis, which 

 in many districts abounds at that season. Those that we have 

 opened have always had their craws stuffed with large night 

 moths and their eggs, and pieces of chaffers ; nor does it any- 

 wise appear how they can, weak and unarmed as they seem, 

 inflict any harm upon kine, unless they possess the powers 

 of animal magnetism, and can affect them by fluttering ovei 

 them 



A fern-owl, this evening, (August 27,) shewed off in a very 

 unusual and entertaining manner, by hawking round and round 

 the circumference of my great spreading oak for twenty times 

 following, keeping mostly close to the grass, but occasionally 

 glancing up amidst the boughs of the tree. This amusing 

 bird was then in pursuit of a brood of some particular phalcenes 

 belonging to the oak, of which there are several sorts ; and 

 exhibited on the occasion a command of wing superior, I think, 

 to that of the swallow itself. 



When a person approaches the haunt of fern-owls in an 

 evening, they continue flying round the head of the obtruder j 

 and, by striking their wings together above their backs, in the 

 manner that the pigeons called smiters are known to do, make 

 a smart snap : perhaps at that time they are jealous for their 

 young ; and their noise and gesture are intended by way of 

 menace. 



Fern-owls have attachment to oaks, no doubt on account 

 of food ; for the next evening we saw one again several times 

 among the boughs of the same tree ; but it did not skim round 



we frequently squeezed them out of our cows. We endeavoured to feed 

 one on fresh killed beef, but it refused to eat, and died. In 1824, a cow 

 had three of these in her back, which we extracted ; and having put them 

 in a basin for examination, after we had finished the operation, one of our 

 tame jackdaws deprived us from carrying our intentions into eifect, by 

 devouring them as a lunch. One of these was an inch long, and as thick 

 as our little finger; and the swelling which it produced in the animal's 

 back was of the size of the largest penny-piece. This was extracted by 

 a person pressing with a piece of wood against another piece which we 

 held opposite. The force required to press it through the aperture 

 (which, was about an eighth of an inch in diameter) was such, that 

 the noise resembled that of a pop -gun, arid the worm was projected to 

 a distance of twelve feet from the cow's back ED. 



