Ch. 10: Bird Life on the Downs

Great bustard--Stone curlew--Big hawks--Former abundance of the
raven--Dogs fed on carrion--Ravens fighting--Ravens' breeding-places
in Wilts--Great Ridge Wood ravens--Field-fare breeding in
Wilts--Pewit--Mistle-thrush--Magpie and turtledove--Gamekeepers and
magpies--Rooks and farmers--Starling, the shepherd's favourite
bird--Sparrowhawk and "brown thrush"

Wiltshire, like other places in England, has long been deprived of its
most interesting birds--the species that were best worth preserving. Its
great bustard, once our greatest bird--even greater than the golden and
sea eagles and the "giant crane" with its "trumpet sound" once heard in
the land--is now but a memory. Or a place name: Bustard Inn, no longer
an inn, is well known to the many thousands who now go to the mimic wars
on Salisbury Plain; and there is a Trappist monastery in a village on
the southernmost border of the county, which was once called, and is
still known to old men as, "Bustard Farm." All that Caleb Bawcombe knew
of this grandest bird is what his father had told him; and Isaac knew of
it only from hearsay, although it was still met with in South Wilts when
he was a young man.

The stone curlew, our little bustard with the long wings, big, yellow
eyes, and wild voice, still frequents the uncultivated downs, unhappily
in diminishing numbers. For the private collector's desire to possess
British-taken birds' eggs does not diminish; I doubt if more than one
clutch in ten escapes the searching eyes of the poor shepherds and
labourers who are hired to supply the cabinets. One pair haunted a
flinty spot at Winterbourne Bishop until a year or two ago; at other
points a few miles away I watched other pairs during the summer of 1909,
but in every instance their eggs were taken.

The larger hawks and the raven, which bred in all the woods and forests
of Wiltshire, have, of course, been extirpated by the gamekeepers. The
biggest forest in the county now affords no refuge to any hawk above the
size of a kestrel. Savernake is extensive enough, one would imagine, for
condors to hide in, but it is not so. A few years ago a buzzard made its
appearance there--just a common buzzard, and the entire surrounding
population went mad with excitement about it, and every man who
possessed a gun flew to the forest to join in the hunt until the
wretched bird, after being blazed at for two or three days, was brought
down. I heard of another case at Fonthill Abbey. Nobody could say what
this wandering hawk was--it was very big, blue above with a white breast
barred with black--a "tarrable" fierce-looking bird with fierce, yellow
eyes. All the gamekeepers and several other men with guns were in hot