282 
THE BIRDS OF HAMPSHIRE. 
and wary habits, and is frequently overlooked by casual 
observers. 
At the present time they return year after year to the 
same fields and slopes of the downs, and though many 
eggs are destroyed when the young wheat is rolled, they 
usually manage to rear a brood. 
The modern successor of White can well sympathize 
with the delight with which he must have visited the 
curlew's lonely haunts on the downland, and listened to 
its wild note echoing from all sides, in the quiet of a 
summer's evening. 
But even before White's time, in 1666, Merrett wrote, 
in his Pinax rericm naturaliuni Britannicanim : . . ... 
"Stone curliew, delicatissima avis ex agro Hantoniensi 
Ds Hutchinson, Ornithopola Londinensis." 
There is now no need to specify every locality where 
the bird is to be found. Its breeding-area reaches to the 
borders of the county on the north-west, and as far as 
Romsey towards the New Forest. On the east side we 
might mention Basingstoke, and various places on the 
county-boundary as far south as the Forest of Bere. 
The stone-curlew does not appear to nest in the New 
Forest, at least not on the south side of it, but is often 
seen there at the periods of migration. Mr. Meade- Waldo, 
for example, mentions a specimen picked up under the 
telegraph wires at Boldre, in the severe frost of 1895. 
There is a special interest relating to the visits of this 
bird to the Isle of Wight, because it appears to be better 
known there in winter than at any other season. Bury 
mentions that a nest was found on the Wacklands Estate, 
near Newchurch, more than sixty years ago, but he reckons 
it only an occasional visitor ; he speaks of a party of six 
which appeared in Bordwood Forest during the first week 
