<SPAN name="ch10"><!--Marker--></SPAN>
<h2> CHAPTER X </h2>
<h3> BIRD LIFE ON THE DOWNS </h3>
<blockquote>
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"
</blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 pursuit of it for several days,
until some one fatally wounded it, but it could not be found
where it was supposed to have fallen. A fortnight later its
carcass was discovered by an old shepherd, who told me the
story. It was not in a fit state to be preserved, but he
described it to me, and I have no doubt that it was a
goshawk.</p>
<p>The raven survived longer, and the Shepherd Bawcombe talks
about its abundance when he was a boy, seventy or more years
ago. His way of accounting for its numbers at that time and
its subsequent, somewhat rapid disappearance greatly
interested me.</p>
<p>We have seen his account of deer-stealing, by the villagers
in those brave, old, starvation days when Lord Rivers owned
the deer and hunting rights over a large part of Wiltshire,
extending from Cranborne Chase to Salisbury, and when even so
righteous a man as Isaac Bawcombe was tempted by hunger to
take an occasional deer, discovered out of bounds. At that
time, Caleb said, a good many dogs used for hunting the deer
were kept a few miles from Winterbourne Bishop and were fed
by the keepers in a very primitive manner. Old, worn-out
horses were bought and slaughtered for the dogs. A horse
would be killed and stripped of his hide somewhere away in
the woods, and left for the hounds to batten on its flesh,
tearing at and fighting over it like so many jackals. When
only partially consumed the carcass would become putrid; then
another horse would be killed and skinned at another spot
perhaps a mile away, and the pack would start feeding afresh
there. The result of so much carrion lying about was that
ravens were attracted in numbers to the place and were so
numerous as to be seen in scores together. Later, when the
deer-hunting sport declined in the neighbourhood, and dogs
were no longer fed on carrion, the birds decreased year by
year, and when Caleb was a boy of nine or ten their former
great abundance was but a memory. But he remembers that they
were still fairly common, and he had much to say about the
old belief that the raven "smells death," and when seen
hovering over a flock, uttering its croak, it is a sure sign
that a sheep is in a bad way and will shortly die.</p>
<p>One of his recollections of the bird may be given here. It
was one of those things seen in boyhood which had very deeply
impressed him. One fine day he was on the down with an elder
brother, when they heard the familiar croak and spied three
birds at a distance engaged in a fight in the air. Two of the
birds were in pursuit of the third, and rose alternately to
rush upon and strike at their victim from above. They were
coming down from a considerable height, and at last were
directly over the boys, not more than forty or fifty feet
from the ground; and the youngsters were amazed at their
fury, the loud, rushing sound of their wings, as of a
torrent, and of their deep, hoarse croaks and savage, barking
cries. Then they began to rise again, the hunted bird trying
to keep above his enemies, they in their turn striving to
rise higher still so as to rush down upon him from overhead;
and in this way they towered higher and higher, their barking
cries coming fainter and fainter back to earth, until the
boys, not to lose sight of them, cast themselves down flat on
their backs, and, continuing to gaze up, saw them at last no
bigger than three "leetle blackbirds." Then they vanished;
but the boys, still lying on their backs, kept their eyes
fixed on the same spot, and by and by first one black speck
reappeared, then a second, and they soon saw that two birds
were swiftly coming down to earth. They fell swiftly and
silently, and finally pitched upon the down not more than a
couple of hundred yards from the boys. The hunted bird had
evidently succeeded in throwing them off and escaping.
Probably it was one of their own young, for the ravens' habit
is when their young are fully grown to hunt them out of the
neighbourhood, or, when they cannot drive them off, to kill
them.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that the carrion did attract ravens in
numbers to this part of Wiltshire, but it is a fact that up
to that date—about 1830—the bird had many
well-known, old breeding-places in the county. The Rev. A. C.
Smith, in his "Birds of Wiltshire," names twenty-three
breeding-places, no fewer than nine of them on Salisbury
Plain; but at the date of the publication of his work, 1887,
only three of all these nesting-places were still in use:
South Tidworth, Wilton Park, and Compton Park, Compton
Chamberlain. Doubtless there were other ancient
breeding-places which the author had not heard of: one was at
the Great Ridge Wood, overlooking the Wylye valley, where
ravens bred down to about thirty-five or forty years ago. I
have found many old men in that neighbourhood who remember
the birds, and they tell that the raven tree was a great oak
which was cut down about sixty years ago, after which the
birds built their nest in another tree not far away. A London
friend of mine, who was born in the neighbourhood of the
Great Ridge Wood, remembers the ravens as one of the common
sights of the place when he was a boy. He tells of an unlucky
farmer in those parts whose sheep fell sick and died in
numbers, year after year, bringing him down to the brink of
ruin, and how his old head-shepherd would say, solemnly
shaking his head, "'Tis not strange—master, he shot a
raven."</p>
<p>There was no ravens' breeding-place very near Winterbourne
Bishop. Caleb had "never heared tell of a nestie"; but he had
once seen the nest of another species which is supposed never
to breed in this country. He was a small boy at the time,
when one day an old shepherd of the place going out from the
village saw Caleb, and calling to him said, "You're the boy
that likes birds; if you'll come with me, I'll show 'ee what
no man ever seed afore"; and Caleb, fired with curiosity,
followed him away to a distance from home, out from the
downs, into the woods and to a place where he had never been,
where there were bracken and heath with birch and thorn-trees
scattered about. On cautiously approaching a clump of birches
they saw a big, thrush-like bird fly out of a large nest
about ten feet from the ground, and settle on a tree close
by, where it was joined by its mate. The old man pointed out
that it was a felt or fieldfare, a thrush nearly as big as
the mistle-thrush but different in colour, and he said that
it was a bird that came to England in flocks in winter from
no man knows where, far off in the north, and always went
away before breeding-time. This was the only felt he had ever
seen breeding in this country, and he "didn't believe that no
man had ever seed such a thing before." He would not climb
the tree to see the eggs, or even go very near it, for fear
of disturbing the birds.</p>
<p>This man, Caleb said, was a great one for birds: he knew them
all, but seldom said anything about them; he watched and
found out a good deal about them just for his private
pleasure.</p>
<p>The characteristic species of this part of the down country,
comprising the parish of Winterbourne Bishop, are the pewit,
magpie, turtledove, mistle-thrush, and starling. The pewit is
universal on the hills, but will inevitably be driven away
from all that portion of Salisbury Plain used for military
purposes. The mistle-thrush becomes common in summer after
its early breeding season is ended, when the birds in small
flocks resort to the downs, where they continue until cold
weather drives them away to the shelter of the wooded, low
country.</p>
<p>In this neighbourhood there are thickets of thorn, holly,
bramble, and birch growing over hundreds of acres of down,
and here the hill-magpie, as it is called, has its chief
breeding-ground, and is so common that you can always get a
sight of at least twenty birds in an afternoon's walk. Here,
too, is the metropolis of the turtledove, and the low sound
of its crooning is heard all day in summer, the other most
common sound being that of magpies—their subdued,
conversational chatter and their solo-singing, the chant or
call which a bird will go on repeating for a hundred times.
The wonder is how the doves succeed in such a place in
hatching any couple of chalk-white eggs, placed on a small
platform of sticks, or of rearing any pair of young,
conspicuous in their blue skins and bright yellow down!</p>
<p>The keepers tell me they get even with these kill-birds later
in the year, when they take to roosting in the woods, a mile
away in the valley. The birds are waited for at some point
where they are accustomed to slip in at dark, and one keeper
told me that on one evening alone assisted by a friend he had
succeeded in shooting thirty birds.</p>
<p>On Winterbourne Bishop Down and round the village the magpies
are not persecuted, probably because the gamekeepers, the
professional bird-killers, have lost heart in this place. It
is a curious and rather pretty story. There is no squire, as
we have seen; the farmers have the rabbits, and for game the
shooting is let, or to let, by some one who claims to be lord
of the manor, who lives at a distance or abroad. At all
events he is not known personally to the people, and all they
know about the overlordship is that, whereas in years gone by
every villager had certain rights in the down—to cut
furze and keep a cow, or pony, or donkey, or half a dozen
sheep or goats—now they have none; but how and why and
when these rights were lost nobody knows. Naturally there is
no sympathy between the villagers and the keepers sent from a
distance to protect the game, so that the shooting may be let
to some other stranger. On the contrary, they religiously
destroy every nest they can find, with the result that there
are too few birds for anyone to take the shooting, and it
remains year after year unlet.</p>
<p>This unsettled state of things is all to the advantage of the
black and white bird with the ornamental tail, and he
flourishes accordingly and builds his big, thorny nests in
the roadside trees about the village.</p>
<p>The one big bird on these downs, as in so many other places
in England, is the rook, and let us humbly thank the gods who
own this green earth and all the creatures which inhabit it
that they have in their goodness left us this one. For it is
something to have a rook, although he is not a great bird
compared with the great ones lost—bustard and kite and
raven and goshawk, and many others. His abundance on the
cultivated downs is rather strange when one remembers the
outcry made against him in some parts on account of his
injurious habits; but here it appears the sentiment in his
favour is just as strong in the farmer, or in a good many
farmers, as in the great landlord. The biggest rookery I know
on Salisbury Plain is at a farm-house where the farmer owns
the land himself and cultivates about nine hundred acres. One
would imagine that he would keep his rooks down in these days
when a boy cannot be hired to scare the birds from the crops.</p>
<p>One day, near West Knoyle, I came upon a vast company of
rooks busily engaged on a ploughed field where everything
short of placing a bird-scarer on the ground had been done to
keep the birds off. A score of rooks had been shot and
suspended to long sticks planted about the field, and there
were three formidable-looking men of straw and rags with hats
on their heads and wooden guns under their arms. But the
rooks were there all the same; I counted seven at one spot,
prodding the earth close to the feet of one of the
scarecrows. I went into the field to see what they were
doing, and found that it was sown with vetches, just
beginning to come up, and the birds were digging the seed up.</p>
<p>Three months later, near the same spot, on Mere Down, I found
these birds feasting on the corn, when it had been long cut
but could not be carried on account of the wet weather. It
was a large field of fifty to sixty acres, and as I walked by
it the birds came flying leisurely over my head to settle
with loud cawings on the stocks. It was a magnificent
sight—the great, blue-black bird-forms on the golden
wheat, an animated group of three or four to half a dozen on
every stock, while others walked about the ground to pick up
the scattered grain, and others were flying over them, for
just then the sun was shining on the field and beyond it the
sky was blue. Never had I witnessed birds so manifestly
rejoicing at their good fortune, with happy, loud caw-caw. Or
rather haw-haw! what a harvest, what abundance! was there
ever a more perfect August and September! Rain, rain, by
night and in the morning; then sun and wind to dry our
feathers and make us glad, but never enough to dry the corn
to enable them to carry it and build it up in stacks where it
would be so much harder to get at. Could anything be better!</p>
<p>But the commonest bird, the one which vastly outnumbers all
the others I have named together, is the starling. It was
Caleb Bawcombe's favourite bird, and I believe it is regarded
with peculiar affection by all shepherds on the downs on
account of its constant association with sheep in the
pasture. The dog, the sheep, and the crowd of
starlings—these are the lonely man's companions during
his long days on the hills from April or May to November. And
what a wise bird he is, and how well he knows his friends and
his enemies! There was nothing more beautiful to see, Caleb
would say, than the behaviour of a flock of starlings when a
hawk was about. If it was a kestrel they took little or no
notice of it, but if a sparrowhawk made its appearance,
instantly the crowd of birds could be seen flying at furious
speed towards the nearest flock of sheep, and down into the
flock they would fall like a shower of stones and instantly
disappear from sight. There they would remain on the ground,
among the legs of the grazing sheep, until the hawk had gone
on his way and passed out of sight.</p>
<p>The sparrowhawk's victims are mostly made among the young
birds that flock together in summer and live apart from the
adults during the summer months after the breeding season is
over.</p>
<p>When I find a dead starling on the downs ranged over by
sparrowhawks, it is almost always a young bird—a "brown
thrush" as it used to be called by the old naturalists. You
may know that the slayer was a sparrowhawk by the appearance
of the bird, its body untouched, but the flesh picked neatly
from the neck and the head gone. That was swallowed whole,
after the beak had been cut off. You will find the beak lying
by the side of the body. In summertime, when birds are most
abundant, after the breeding season, the sparrowhawk is a
fastidious feeder.</p>
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