Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/423

Rh eggs near that place, and that they lay only two at a time on the bare ground. The eggs were oblong, dusky, 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 rudiments 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 4th, 1790. The woman who brought me two fern-owl's eggs last year on July 14th, 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.—. No 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 daytime. 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.—.