At Alton there were some extensive woods and coppices on the farm, which were favourite breeding-places for pheasants, being dry and sunny.  Some months before October 1, when pheasant shooting begins, a white pheasant was seen, and although he disappeared for a time, he fell eventually to the gun of the tenant.  He was a beautiful bird, and was considered worth stuffing as a rarity.  Albinism is not uncommon in the blackbird; I have seen two partial instances lately; one was constantly visible in my garden and meadows, with head nearly all white, and the other I saw in the public garden at Bournemouth, with the peculiarity still more developed.  A white martin, or swallow, came into the house of a friend near Aldington, and was regarded as an unfavourable omen.  Melanism, the opposite of albinism, is rarer, and the only instance I have seen was that of a black bullfinch at Aldington; it had evidently been mobbed as a stranger by other birds of its kind, as it was injured and nearly dead when captured.  I had the specimen stuffed as a curiosity, though I am not fond of stuffed birds.  It is said that hemp-seed, if given in undue quantities to cage bullfinches, will produce the black colour, even upon a bird of quite natural plumage originally, and a case of the kind is mentioned by Gilbert White.

Aldington, with its quiet apple orchards and the “island” and shrubberies below my garden, was a happy refuge for birds of all kinds, and the old pollard-willow heads a favourite nesting-place.  Worcestershire people have some very curious names for birds, and some of these are also heard in Hampshire and Dorset.  The green woodpecker is the “stock-eagle,” “ekal,” or “hickle,” both in Worcestershire and Hampshire, and the word survives too in “Hickle Brook” in the Forest, and in “Hickle Street,” a part of Buckle Street in Worcestershire.  As a boy I once marked a green woodpecker into one of the round holes we see quite newly cut by the bird in an oak; getting a butterfly net I clapped it over the hole, caught the bird, took it home and placed it in a wicker cage.  Then, returning to the tree with a chisel and mallet, I cut a hole about a foot below the entrance to the nest, only to find young birds instead of the eggs for which I had hoped.  I went home to see how my captive was getting on; she was gone, and her method of escape was plain, one or two of the wicker bars being neatly cut through.  I had forgotten the power of “stocking” of a “stock-eagle,” for that is the meaning of the prefix in the name.

The laughing cry of the green woodpecker, or “yaffle,” as the bird is by onomatopoeia called in some parts, is regarded as a sign of rain.  I doubt whether it should be always so interpreted, for I know it is sometimes a sign of distress or call for help, having heard it from one in full flight from a pursuing hawk.  Other curious local names of birds in Worcestershire are “Blue Isaac” for hedge sparrow, “mumruffin” for long-tailed tit, “maggot” for magpie, and the heron is always called “bittern” (really quite a distinct bird).  There are innumerable rhymes as to the signification of numbers where magpies are concerned, but the most complete I have heard runs thus: