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."

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