26 
FERN-OWL. 
I believe its very peculiar note is uttered sitting, and never 
on tlie wing. I have seen it on a turf-stack with its throat 
nearly touching the turf, and its tail elevated, and have 
heard it in this situation utter its call, which resembles the 
birr of the mole-cricket, an insect very abundant in this 
neighbourhood. I have almost been induced to think this 
noise serves as a decoy to the male mole-cricket, this being 
occasionally found in the craw of these birds when shot. 
Those who may not be acquainted with the cry of the bird 
or the insect, may imagine the noise of an auger boring 
oak, or any hard wood, continued, and not broken off, as is 
the noise of the auger, from the constant changing of the 
hands. The eggs of the fern-owl have frequently been 
brought me by boys : they are only two in number, grey- 
ish white, clouded and blotched with deeper shades of the 
same colour ; the hen lays them on the soil, which is either 
peat, or a fine soft blue sand, in which she merely makes 
a slight concavity, but no nest whatever. The first cry 
of the fern-owl is the signal for the night-flying moths to 
appear on the mng, or rather, the signal for the entomolo- 
gist's expecting them.* 
The bird is plentiful on every heathy district in the 
neighbourhood. On Highdown heath Mr. Staflbrd shot 
forty-seven in a very short space of time. 
* The fern owl grasps a branch in a different way from other birds, the feet 
not being placed side by side on the branch — an arrangement which other birds 
adopt, and which places the body and branch at right angles with each other — 
but one before the other, so that the body of the bird is parallel with the branch. 
It is also to be remarked, that if the twig or bough is slightly ascending, this 
curious bird will almost invariably perch with bis tail upwards. I have no 
hesitation in saying that moths constitute its usual food, and these it swallows 
entire and alive. I have known instances of their re-ascending the throat, 
crawling out of the mouth and escaping, after one of these birds had been shot 
by moonlight.—^. N. 
