1 
OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 281 
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 ?aw 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 
melolontha on the oak, and the Scarabceus 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 sun-set 
and an hour before sun-rise. 
On this day (July 14, 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 were oblong, dusk}^ and streaked somewhat 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 rudi- 
ments of young, and would have been hatched perhaps in a week. 
From hence we may see the time of their breeding, which corresponds 
pretty well with that of the swift, as does also the period of their 
arrival. Each species is usually seen about the beginning of May. 
Each breeds but once in a summer ; each lays only two eggs. 
July 4, 1790. The woman who brought me two fern-owrs eggs last 
year on July 14, on this day produced me two more, one of which had 
been laid this morning, as appears plainly, because there was only one 
in the nest the evening before. They were found, as last July, on the 
verge of the down above the hermitage under a beechen shrub, on the 
naked ground. Last year those eggs were full of young, just ready to 
be hatched. 
These circumstances point out the exact time when these curious 
nocturnal migratory birds lay their eggs and hatch their young. Fern- 
owls, like snipes, stone curlews, and some other birds, make no nest. 
Birds that build on the ground do not make much of nests. — White. 
'Eo author that I am acquainted with has given so accurate and 
pleasing an account of the manners and habits of the goat-sucker as 
Mr. White, taken entirely from his own observations. Its being a 
nocturnal bird, has prevented my having many opportunities of 
observing it. I suspect that it passes the day in concealment amidst the 
dark and shady gloom of deep-wooded dells, or as they are called here 
gills ; having more than once seen it roused from such solitary places 
by my dogs, when shooting in the day-time. I have also sometimes 
seen it in an evening, but not long enough to take notice of its habits 
and manners. I have never seen it but in the summer, between the 
months of May and September. — Mark wick. 
