324 OBSER VA TIONS ON BIRDS. 



A fern-owl, this evening (August 27th), showed off 

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

 May these birds find the Scarahceus melolontha on the oak, 

 and the Scarahceus solstitialis at midsummer. These 

 peculiar birds can only be watched and observed for two 

 hours in the twenty-four ; and then in dubious twilight, an 

 hour after sunset and an hour before sunrise. 



On this day (July 14th, 1789) a woman brought me two 

 eggs of a fern-owl, or evening 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 wese oblong, dusky, and streaked 



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