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, greyish 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 wing,
or rather the signal for the entomologist expecting them.

The migratory periods of this bird are not well ascertained; but I have
known one shot Nov. 27th, 1821, and they had arrived April 28th, 1830.
As there is scarcely a British bird of which so little is known, the
following notes may be interesting:--It has been seen perched on the
bar of a gate, not across, but according to its length, with the tail
elevated; uttering its peculiar sounds; but when perching, as it often
does, on the summit of a twig of oaken copse, it fixes upright, with
the feet grasping the twig, and not sitting; just as the swift perches
against a wall. One was killed in broad daylight, perched on the upper
side of a sloping branch of considerable size; the head was uppermost,
and it rested on the feet and tarsi, the latter being bare on the under
surface for that purpose. Its attitude in this situation much resembled
that of a woodpecker. One that was kept alive with its wing broken sat
across the finger, like another bird. When about to take flight it makes
a cracking noise, as if the wings smote together, after the manner of
a pigeon.

_Harbingers of Spring._--One of the earliest intimations of approaching