TURTLE-DOVE (Columba turtur).-This pretty delicate creature with speckled neck builds in bushes lower than the wood-pigeon, and the mournful note resounds in the trees.
PHEASANT (Phasianus colchicus).-Not a real native, but cultivated to any extent. A cock pheasant with the evening sun gilding his back is a rare picture of beauty.
PARTRIDGE (Tetrao perdix).-Numerous.
HERON (Ardea cinerea).-Sometimes flies far overhead, the long legs projecting behind.
SANDPIPER (Totanus hypoleucus).-Seen walking over a mass of weeds in the Itchen canal.
SNIPE (Scolopax gallinago).-Brought in by sportsmen from the water meadows.
WOODCOCK (Scolopax rusticola).-Not common, but sometimes shot.
JACK-SNIPE (Scolopax gallinula).-Not common, but sometimes shot.
LAND-RAIL (Crex pratensis).-Corn-Crake. May be heard "craking" in the long grass in early morning before the hay is cut.
WATER-RAIL (Rallus aquaticus).-In a meadow at Otterbourne, 22nd January 1855.
LITTLE GREBE (Podiceps minor).-Dabchick, as it is commonly called, swims in the Itchen and in Fisher's Pond (on Colden Common), dipping down suddenly without a trace of the least alarm.
MOOR-HEN (Gallinula chloropus).-Very similar are the ways of the moor-hen, with its brilliant beak. But once, by some extraordinary chance, a moor-hen fell down a cottage chimney, and was brought alive for inspection by a boy, who, ignorant of natural objects, as was always the case in villages forty years ago, thought it a rare foreign specimen. It was a thatched cottage, but if it had been slated the moor-hen might have taken the roof for a sheet of water by moonlight, as the Great Water-Beetle has been known to do, and come down the chimney in like manner. A brood comes constantly to be fed on a lawn at Bishopstoke.
PEEWIT (Vanellus cristatus).-Otherwise the Crested Lapwing. It floats along in numbers when migrating, the whole flock turning at the same time and displaying either the dark or the white side of their wings with a startling effect. They seem effaced for a moment, the next the white sails are shown, then gone again. When paired, and nesting in the meadows, their cry causes their local name, as their other English title is derived from their characteristic manuvres to lead the enemy from their young. Did they learn the habit when their so-called plovers' eggs became a dainty?
GOLDEN PLOVER (Charadrius pluvialis).-Noted at Otterbourne meadows by J. B. Yonge.
WILD DUCK (Anas boschas).-The mallard is splendid in plumage, and in shape is far more graceful than his domesticated brother. In early winter the wild ducks fly overhead in a wedge-shaped phalanx, and by and by they pair, and if disturbed start up with a sudden quack, quack from the copse-wood pond. Broods of downy wild ducks have been brought in by boys, but it has almost always proved impossible to rear them.
TEAL (Querquedula anas).-This very pretty little duck used to build on Cranbury Common, but may have been frightened away by increasing population.
GULL (Larus canus).-Flocks of those white-breasted birds sometimes alight on ploughed fields round Otterbourne, and even some miles farther from the sea. They are sometimes kept in gardens to destroy the slugs.
These birds have all been actually seen and noted down by members of the Yonge family.
FLOWERS
TRAVELLER'S JOY (Clematis Vitalba).-Locally called Old Man's Beard, most appropriately, as its curling, silvery masses of seeds hang in wreaths over the hedges. There is a giant trunk growing up from the moat of Merdon Castle.
MEADOW RUE (Thalictrum flavum).-Handsome foliage and blossoms, showing much of anthers, growing on the banks of the Itchen canal.
WINDFLOWER (Anemone nemorosa).-Smellfoxes, as the villagers' children inelegantly term this elegant flower, spreading its pearl-white blossom, by means of its creeping root, all over the copses, and blushing purple as the season advances.
WATER CROWFOOT (Ranunculus aquatilis).-The white flowers, with yellow eyes, make quite a sheet over the ponds of Cranbury Common, etc. Ivy-leaved (R. hederaceus).-Not so frequent. The ivy-shaped leaves float above, the long fibrous ones go below. When there is lack of moisture, leaves and flower are sometimes so small that it has been supposed to be a different species. It was once in a stagnant pond in Boyatt Lane, but is extinct again.
BUTTERCUP or CROWFOOT-
(R. sceleratus) Highly-polished petals, which spangle
(R. acris) the fields and hedges with gold.
(R. repens) All much alike; all haunting
(R. bulbosus) kitchen-gardens and pastures, where the cattle, disliking their taste, leave the stems standing up alone.
SPEARWORT (R. flammula).-Flower like the others, but with narrow leaves.
GOLDILOCKS (R. auricomus).-More delicate, upper leaves spear-shaped, lower pinnate. In the borders of the copse wood of Otterbourne House.
CORN CROWFOOT (R. Ficaria).-Small, growing between the corn with hooked capsules.
SMALL CELANDINE (R. Bcaria).-The real buttercup of childhood, with its crown of numerous shining petals, making stars along the banks at the first breath of spring. One of the most welcome of flowers.
KING CUPS (Caltha palustris).-Large, gorgeous flowers, in every wet place, making a golden river in a dell at Cranbury.
GREEN HELLEBORE (Helleborus viridis).-Under an oak-tree, in a hedgerow leading from King's Lane, Standon, and in Hursley.
FUMITORY (Fumaria officinalis).-The pretty purple blossoms and graceful bluish foliage often spring up in gardens where they are treated as weeds.
YELLOW F. (F. lutea).-An old wall at Hursley.
CLIMBING F. (Corydalis claviculata).-Cuckoo bushes. Standon, and in Hursley.
COLUMBINE (Aquilegia vulgaris).-This group of purple doves, or of Turkish slippers, does not here merit the term vulgaris, though, wherever it occurs, it is too far from a garden to be a stray. Ampfield Wood, Lincoln's Copse, King's Lane, and Crabwood have each furnished a specimen.
BARBERRY (Berberis vulgaris).-This handsome shrub of yellow wood, delicate clusters of yellow flowers, and crimson fruit in long oval bunches has been sedulously banished from an idea that it poisons grass in its vicinity. There used to be a bush in Otterbourne House grounds, but it has disappeared, and only one now remains in the hedge of Pitt Downs.
POPPY (Papaver Rhæas).-Making neglected fields glorious with a crimson mantle, visible for miles in the sun.
GREATER CELANDINE (Chelidonium majus).-Yellow flowers, very frail, handsome pinnate leaf-lane at Brambridge, Standon, and in Hursley.
CRUCIFERA
ROCKET (Diplotaxis tenuifolia).-Seen at Brambridge.
CHARLOCK (Sinapis arvensis).-Making fields golden.
WHITE C. (S. alba).-Standon, Hursley.
JACK-BY-THE-HEDGE (Sisymbrium alliaria).-Seen at Brambridge.
LADY'S SMOCK (Cardamine pratensis).-No doubt named because the pearly flowers look on a moist meadow like linen bleaching. Sometimes double in rich ground.
HAIRY CARDAMINE (C. hirsuta).-Hursley.