122 THE NIGHTJAR 



spinning-wheel song over the sloping ground of many 

 a common, where the golden gorse blossoms give out 

 their delicious, apricot-like scent, hanging over rifts in 

 the sandstone; and the ground below is studded with 

 patches of ling, below which again luxuriant green 

 ferns, having their roots in the cool moist bottoms, raise 

 their tall fronds. It is warm on the bare patches of 

 stony, sandy soil, on which the sun has been shining all 

 the afternoon, and moths with other winged insects are 

 here in numbers. The Fern Owls know that, and they 

 are churring and squeaking over the slopes and tumbling 

 and darting about after their winged prey, flying quite 

 near to you as you rest on a bit of their hunting ground. 

 On a bare spot on the sunny slope, where a few gorse 

 needles and bits of dead bracken lie, two oblong creamy 

 white eggs will be laid later, marbled and veined in such 

 tones as match their surroundings of stones, dead leaves 

 and bits of brown fern-stalk, so closely that it is by a 

 rare chance that the eye distinguishes them. And when 

 the little creatures are hatched out, they will look, at 

 first, just like a bit of lichen covered stone and a dead 

 leaf. The mother will, it is said, pick her eggs up and 

 place them elsewhere if an intruder has approached them 

 too closely. When the young birds begin to flutter 

 with their wings, the parent bird shifts them up by easy 

 stages, through the low growth of heather and ferns, 

 hustling them on, and bearing them up, until they reach 

 the lowest branches of some dipping oak bough, where 

 they sit in a line with the branch they rest on, invisible 

 to the ordinary observer ; and there they are fed with 

 scarcely a pause in the flight of the industrious parent. 

 In Devonshire they feed much on " fern-web " namely, 

 small chafers. 



