OBSERVATIONS ON 
STONE CURLEW. 
On the 27tli of February, 1788^ stone curlews were heard 
to pipe; and on Marcli 1st, after it was dark, some were 
passing over the village, as might be perceived by their 
quick short note, which they use in their nocturnal excur- 
sions by way of watch-word, that they may not stray and 
lose their companions. 
Thus, we see, that retire whithersoever they may in the 
winter, they return again early in the spring, and are, as it 
now appears, the first summer birds that come back. Per- 
haps the mildness of the season may have quickened the 
emigration of the curlews this year. 
They spend the day in high elevated fields and sheep- 
walks; but seem to descend in the night to streams and 
meadows, perhaps for water, which their upland haunts do 
not afi'ord them/ 
CHIFF CHAFF. 
The smallest uncrested willow- wren, or chiff-chaff, is the 
next early summer bird which we have remarked ; it utters 
two sharp piercing notes, so loud in hollow woods as to 
occasion an echo, and is usually first heard about the 20th 
of March. 
FERN-OWL, OR 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. 
1 On the 31st of Januaiy, 1792, I received a bird of this specless, 
which had been recently killed by a neighbouring farmer, who said 
that he had frequently seen it in his fields during the former part of the 
winter : this perhaps was an occasional straggler, which, by some acci- 
dent, was prevented from accompanying its companions in their migra- 
tion. — Markwick. 
