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CHAPTER IX. 

 THE DOWNS. 



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 1901, 

 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 



