of the obtruder ; and by striking their wings to- 

 gether 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 intend- 

 ed by way of menace. 



Fern-owls seem to have an 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 Scarabceus nielolontha on the oak ; 

 and the Scarabceus solstitialis at midsummer ; but they 

 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 her- 

 mitage, 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, dusk}^ and streaked some- 

 what 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 



