202 
THE BIRDS OF HAMPSHIRE. 
it on foot and sprung it in the cover. On the same 
day Mr. Yalden shot one in a coppice in the parish of 
Emshott, and about the same time one was shot in the 
parish of Greatham. 
These birds are very seldom seen in this district, and 
are probably driven from their watery haunts by the great 
floods and obliged to betake themselves to the uplands. 
The wings expanded measured just four feet. The tail- 
feathers, shafts and all, were just five inches long, and 
ten in number. Though the colours on the bittern's wings 
and back are no ways gaudy or radiant, yet are the dark 
and chesnut streaks so curiously blended and combined as 
to give that fowl a surprising beauty Two of these 
birds I dressed, and found the flavour to be like that 
of a wild duck or teal^ but not so delicate, and nothing like 
the flavour of a hare, and the flesh was very brown. 
It appears since that all these bitterns were killed in 
Selborne parish." 
Colonel Hawker includes three bitterns in his total 
bag between 1802 and 1853. 
Wise includes it among his list of winter birds, and 
says that hardly a year passes without several specimens 
being brought to the bird-stuffers. 
Rake, of Fordingbridge, told him that five were killed 
close to that place in the winter of 1858, and he also 
includes this species in a list he made of the birds that 
he had noticed from his garden at Fordingbridge. 
The last record of its having nested in the county has 
been furnished by the Rev. A. A. Headley, rector of 
Alresford, who writes that "there is absolutely no doubt 
that it bred in' Avington Park in the year 1888 or 1889, or 
perhaps a year or two before, certainly as recently as 1886," 
an egg taken then being in his possession. 
