280 OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 



willow wrens which he assures us he has discovered. Ever since the 

 publication of his History of Selbome I have used my utmost 

 endeavours to discover his three birds, but hitherto without success. I 

 have frequently shot the bird which " haunts only the tops of trees, 

 and makes a sibilous noise," even in the very act of uttering that 

 sibilous note, but it always proved to be the common willow wren or 

 his chiff-chaff. In short, I never could discover more than one species, 

 unless my greater petty chaps, sylvia hortensis of Latham, is his greatest 

 willow wren. MARKWICK. 



FERN-OWL, OE GOAT-SUCKER. 



The country people have a notion that the fern-owl, or churn-owl, 

 or eve-jarr, which they also call a puckeridge, is very injurious to 

 weanling calves, by inflicting as it strikes at them, the fatal distemper 

 known to cow-leeches by the name of puckeridge. Thus does this 

 harmless ill-fated bird fall under a double imputation which it by no 

 means deserves in Italy, of sucking the teats of goats, whence it is 

 called caprimulgus; and with us, of communicating a deadly disorder 

 to cattle. But the truth of the matter is, the malady above mentioned 

 is occasioned by the cestrus bovis, a dipterous insect, which lays its 

 eggs along the chines of kine, where the maggots, when hatched, eat 

 their way through the hide of the beast into the flesh, and grow to a 

 very large size. I have just talked with a man who says he has more 

 than once stripped calves who have died of the puckeridge ; that the 

 ail or complaint lay along the chine, where the flesh was much swelled, 

 and filled with purulent matter. Once I myself saw a large rough 

 maggot of this sort squeezed out of the back of a cow. 



These maggots in Essex are called wornils. 



The least observation and attention wonld 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 scarabcei and phalcence j and through the month of July mostly on 

 the scarabceus soktiticdis, 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 anywise 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 over them. 



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

 and entertaining manner, by hawking round and round the circum- 

 ference 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 phalaena 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 



