ORNITHOLOGY OF OXFORDSHIRE. 27 



much more wooded than it is now), and of birds and beasts. 

 About thirty years before 1892, Tom Barnes (nephew of John 

 Barnes, the old keeper, who would have been then over ninety if 

 living), who afterwards went to New Zealand, saw a Kite feeding on 

 a Crow in Bruern Wood, but failed to shoot it for Phipps. I wish 

 now that he had succeeded, for Phipps would without doubt have 

 preserved it to this daj\ This was the last that either of them 

 heard of the Kite. But Phipps's father took a Kite's nest in 

 Bledington Heath Wood, probably eighty years earlier, for it was 

 when he was a boy or young man, and he would have been over a 

 hundred years old if living then. 



Mr. B. W. Calvertt was told, in 1897, by one Curtiss, of 

 Charlbury, former gardener to the late Dowager Lady Churchill, 

 at the Banger's Lodge, Wychwood Forest, that Kites were quite 

 common down to about the year 1850. Although he never took 

 any interest in birds, yet he knew the Kite and its forked tail. 



It was about fifty years since Tom Phipps saw a Baven. He 

 was, as a little boy (of ten or twelve), "leasing " in a field on the 

 Churchill side of Kingham, when a bird, looking like a great 

 Crow, flew over, calling, in a deep hoarse low voice, " cork cork 

 corrk," and the women in the field looked up and said : " Look at 

 the Baven ; there will be sure to be someone die at Kingham, for 

 he is calling ' corpse corpse corpse.' " 



Mr. George Wise told me, in 1891, that about fifty years 

 earlier, he went with his father up to Tusmore Park in a donkey 

 cart. While they were inspecting some sheep in a pen, a pair of 

 " great old Bavens " came out of Tusmore Wood, and flew over 

 the pen. They were the last he ever saw. They were, he said, 

 bigger than Gor Crows. Mr. Wise is noted for a wonderfully 

 good memory. He does not know the Kite, which, owing to the 

 lack of woods, probably became extinct in this district long 

 before it died out in the wooded parts of Oxon. But years 

 ago I have heard ploughboys speak of the "Kite-Hawk," 

 bestowing the name on the Sparrow-Hawk. And in the same 

 way Mr. Wise speaks of the "Buzzard Hawk" and Sparrow 

 Hawk, when he means the Sparrow-Hawk and Kestrel. The 

 names, in fact, survive long after any recollection or tradition of 

 the birds they really belong to. I once heard a man call a large 

 female Sparrow Hawk a " Hare Harrier." The ' Hawk and 



