In the Neighbourhood of Salisbury. 111 
little time ago a hen bird flew off with a thrush, which she captured 
just in front of my dining-room window ; and a few days afterwards 
another thrush flew violently against the plate-glass of the same 
window, leaving a halo of feathers in the air, and killed itself on 
the spot, as though chased by the same bird. 
_ I remember, when a school-boy at Winchester, seeing a little 
male bird of this species, which a lad had killed with a stone in 
“Double Hedge,” as it was called. It was the most beautifully- 
plumaged bird I have ever seen, and I have never met with its equal 
in any collection. The back was of the darkest slate colour, almost 
approaching black; while the entire breast and under parts were 
bright rufous—the rufous being so continuous, as almost to obscure 
altogether the usual bars to the edge of the feathers, and so pre- 
senting to the casual observer a nearly uniform orange-coloured 
surface. It is curious that the nestlings of this species when first 
hatched, should be covered with a perfectly white down, thus sharing 
a similar garb to that of the young of the Golden Eagle and Honey 
Buzzard. In mentioning this species I cannot help relating an 
anecdote which was told me when I was curate of Bishops Lydeard, 
near Taunton, a note of which I made long ago in sundry notices of 
_ birds I was keeping at the time. A gamekeeper discovered a 
Sparrow Hawk’s nest not far from the parish in which I was then 
residing, and shot the hen bird. Concluding he had destroyed the 
nest, he thought no more about the matter, until in three or four 
_ days’ time, he noticed that another hen bird had filled the place of 
the one that he had killed. This bird he also shot—when, once 
again, a third hen bird was brought to the nest, which quickly 
_ shared the same fate as its two predecessors. The keeper was now 
- induced to watch the nest narrowly, and in the course of the summer 
he shot no less than e/even hen birds at the same nest, when at last 
he killed the little cock bird, by mistake, and “ the tale was told.” 
 - Milvus Regalis, “The Kite.” ‘This fine bird, once the character- 
_ istic bird of the country, and the terror of each poultry yard and 
_ farmer’s wife in every county, is now, alas! conspicuous only by its 
_ absence. The only occasion on which I can remember to have 
_ myself seen it, was when I was a school-boy at Hammersmith, in 
