The Natural History of Selborne

Benham skims the horse-fields. Rasps come in: not well flavoured. On this day a woman brought me two eggs of a fern-owl or eve-jarr, which she found on the verge of the hanger to the left of the hermitage, under a beechen shrubb. This person, who lives just at the foot of the hanger, seems well acquainted with these nocturnal swallows, & says she has often found their eggs in that place, & that they lay only two at a time on the bare ground. The eggs were oblong, dusky, & streaked somewhat in the manner of the plumage of the parent-bird, & were equal in size at each end. The dam was sitting on the eggs when found, which contained the rudiments of young, & would have 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.