Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/321

Rh now to the other end of the Plestor, we enter the churchyard and stop to admire the fine yew, said to be second in size only to one other in England. Compared with the date when it was a slender stripling, White's time seems modern indeed. A pair of nuthatches has adapted one of the holes in its venerable trunk to nesting purposes. No doubt White often stood in its shade to watch the swifts darting into their holes in the church tower, or the white-owl bringing mice to her young ones under the eaves. His grave within the church is unmarked except by his initials, and date, 26th June, 1793.

We now turn our steps towards the Hanger, that "vast hill of chalk rising three hundred feet above the village." The beeches with which it is covered are tall and slender, owing to their growing so closely together. It was here that a boy climbed one of them "though standing on so steep and dizzy a situation" to plunder the honey-buzzards' nest. A large part of the wood has been cleared from the top of the hanger, the trees having apparently fallen before some southwest gale. The little summer-house where White and his friends used to come to take tea on fine summer evenings, when on one occasion a nightjar, perching on the roof to "churr," caused the whole structure to vibrate, must have been somewhere hereabouts, perhaps at the spot where the trees have been removed to allow us to catch sight of the village below. From this point