Cl AER UX: 
THE DOWN'S. 
THE wanderer over the Southern Downs may expect to meet with fine 
air, fine scenery, and, under normal circumstances, one fine bird—the Stone 
Curlew. Salisbury Plain, indeed, could boast once of a yet nobler denizen 
in the Great Bustard. It was one of the last refuges of that splendid bird, 
and it was here that sportsmen are said to have coursed it with greyhounds. 
Now the combined efforts of the husbandman, the golfer, and the War 
Office have banished it from its haunts for ever; and lucky indeed will be 
the visitor who gets a distant glimpse of a Peregrine, or even a Merlin, 
during a sojourn lasting for a week. Peregrines do frequent it at times 
all the same, and the story of the Salisbury Canon, who stocked his larder 
by robbing the eyrie of some Peregrines on the Cathedral roof, has this 
much truth in it—that the birds have been known to haunt it for some 
considerable periods, and have even dropped eggs in the spouting. 
Merlins turn up pretty often in the autumn, and, when Falconers go 
there after Larks at that season, wild birds have been known to join the 
trained ones in their pursuit; but, when all is said and done, I feel bound 
to record the damaging testimony of an enthusiast who has often visited 
the locality, and states that he has never seen anything more exciting 
than a Golden Plover. Personally, though I have roamed the Downs at 
various seasons for over twenty years, the Kestrel and Sparrowhawk are 
the only raptorial birds that I have ever seen on them, and even the Sparrow- 
hawk has of late become quite rare. Nevertheless, as recently as r1gor, 
I stumbled on three playing together on the ground in company with 
three Magpies, and enjoyed for the nonce the unique experience of putting 
up a veritable covey of predatory birds! 
Towards the end of the last century I remember admiring a splendid 
specimen of the Kite which had just been killed near Alresford, and had 
found its way to Chalkley’s shop at Winchester, and in conversation with 
a gamekeeper near the same city, I was told how he had watched a huge 
“Buzzard Hawk” fly across his warren in the preceding spring, the bird 
