CHAPTER X

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