The Birds of Dorsetshire; A Contribution to the Natural History of the County (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: APPENDIX. MONTAGU'S HARRIER (page 12). At Winterbourne Kingston, on the 24th June 1887, whilst a carter in the employ of Mr. E. Besent was cutting a field of clover with a mowing-machine, he disturbed a large hawk from her nest, which was immediately joined by another equal in size, but of lighter plumage. The sudden apparition of so large a bird frightened the horse, but before the machine reached the nest, the carter descried it. It was on the bare ground, about the size of a man's hat, composed of grass and feathers, and contained four eggs, which were bluish white, with very indistinct reddish spots, and slightly incubated. On comparing one of these with a series in the Natural History Museum it was apparent that it belonged to Montagu's Harrier, Circus cineraceiis. The grass in the neighbourhood of the nest was much damaged and trodden down. The birds frequented the neighbourhood for some days afterwards. They were seen in a field of sainfoin a quarter of a mile from the clover- field before and after the 24th; and during the course of cutting it, in the month of July, the mowing-machine disturbed " a large brown hawk." No nest was found, though Mr. Besent thinks there was one destroyed by the machine. Some time afterwards I saw two Harriers on the wing, either birds of the year or females, leisurely beating a stubble-field within half a mile of Kingston. BLACK GROUSE (page 68). Sixty years ago, when the condition of the country was more favourable to the bird's habits, and there was much less shooting than at present, black game was more plentiful in Dorsetshire, especially towards the Hampshire border. Colonel Hawker has left a record of what was in his time considered a good day's sport with Black Grouse in the South of England. He writes: l? " The best, ...