FERN OWL. 
273 
They spend the day in high elevated fields and sheep-walks ; 
but seem to descend in the night to streams and meadows, per- 
haps for water, which their upland haunts do not afford them.* 
THE SMALLEST UNCRESTED WILLOW WREN. 
The smallest uncrested willow wren, or chifF chaf, 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.f 
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 in- 
jurious 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 im- 
putation which it by no means deserves — in Italy, of sucking the 
teats of goats, whence it is called caprimulgus j 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 
(Bstrus hovis, 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 wormils. 
* On the 31st of January 1792 I received a bird of this species which had been recentlj' 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 accident, was 
prevented from accompanying its companions in their migration. — Markwick. 
t This bird, which Mr. White calls the smallest willow wren or chilf chaf, makes its 
appearance very early in the spring, and is very common with us ; but 1 cannot make out the 
three different species of willow wrens M'hich he assures us he has discovered. Ever since the 
publication of his History of Selborne 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 chaf. In short, I never could dis- 
cover more than one species, unless my greater pettychaps, sylvia hortensis of Latham, is his 
greatest willow wren.* — Mabkwick. 
* It is pretty evident that Mr. Markwick could never have compared his birds too-ether or 
attended much to their distinctive characters, as pointed out by Mr. White; otherwise he could 
not fail to have distinguished them. — F,o. 
T 
