394 
EUROPEAN GOATSUCKER. 
Jar of British authors This chastely coloured 
and beautiful marked bird is of general distribu- 
tion, extending to the most northern counties of 
Scotland, and appearing with us towards the end 
of May. At the commencement of twilight, 
when they are first roused from their daily 
slumber, they perch on some bare elevation of 
the ground, an old wall or fence, or heap of 
stones, or peat-stack, and commence their mono- 
tonous drum or whirr, closely resembling the 
dull sound produced by the wheel used for spin- 
ning wool, and possessing the same variation of 
apparent distance in the sound which is per- 
ceived in the crake of the land rail, or the cry 
of the coot and water rail, or croaking of frogs. 
At one time, it appears so near as to cause an 
alarm that you disturb the utterer ; at another, 
as if the bird had removed to an extreme dis- 
tance, while, during the time, it remained unseen 
at a distance of perhaps not more than forty 
or fifty yards. The flight, when hawking in the 
open grounds, is never high, and is performed 
without any regularity ; sometimes straight for- 
ward, or in gliding circles, with a slow steady 
clap of the wings, in the middle of which they 
will abruptly start into the air for thirty 
or forty feet, resuming their former line by 
a gradual fall. At other times it will be per- 
formed in sudden jerks upwards, in the fall keep- 
ing the wings steadily closed over the back, 
skimming in the intervals near the ground, and 
