Besides deer inhabiting the Forest from the earliest times, no doubt it was also frequented by all such animals as used to be accounted “beasts of the forest,” viz. the hare, boar, and wolf, in addition to the hart and hind.
Adverting to the feathered tribes which have been observed in this neighbourhood, Mr. Machen remarks—“The birds in the Forest do not differ much from those met with in other parts of the west of England. I have been struck with the contrast in the smaller number of large birds, mostly of the falcon kind, which are now seen, in comparison with those I remember fifty years ago. At that time you might often observe fifteen or twenty kites and hawks hovering over Church Hill and the Bicknor walks; but now it is not frequently the case that you see one. It appears to me also that there is a great diminution in the number of all kinds of birds, small as well as large, so that in some parts of the Forest and woods the stillness and absence of animals of every kind is surprising. Ravens too have become very scarce. A pair had a nest by Simmon’s Rock this year (1857), but they are said to drive their young to a distance as soon as they can provide for themselves. The only kind of plover in the Forest is the green plover or lapwing, which were very numerous at one time in the
wet greens. Woodcocks used to be thought never to breed in this country, but they certainly do so now. In this Forest and in other places I have frequently seen them during the summer, and have observed their nests, made on the ground, of slight construction. One above Whitemead had only two eggs. When the plantations were first made, they became, even in the centre of them, well stocked with partridges; but as the woods grew up they all disappeared. Pheasants were turned out by me at Whitemead, and soon spread over the whole Forest. At one time there was a good stock, but lately they are much reduced. There are a great variety of woodpeckers, which do not, I think, hurt sound trees, but rather those which they find already decaying. Fieldfares and redwings come in great numbers. Nightingales are not numerous in the Forest, although they abound in the neighbourhood. They do not like its depths, or large trees hollow below; but prefer a thick close cover, and the vicinity of a road or path where the bushes are low and thick: but I never heard one in the middle of the Forest. Although a country like this seems unsuited to the wheatear, as preferring the Downs of Sussex, &c., still they come here in the spring, and are generally seen by the roads, or on stone walls in which they build their nests, and even in the heaps of stones, as also in the rails of bark. I remember that beautiful bird, the kingfisher, by the Forest brooks, but now you never see one. Flocks of rooks sometimes come into the neighbourhood when the oaks are much blighted, to feed on the grubs, and in such quantities that the trees are quite black with them. They come from a distance, as they are not seen at other times, and never breed in the Forest.”
Mr. Gee, speaking of the birds which he has observed on the north-east side of the Forest, states—“The raven is seen more frequently in the neighbourhood than in most parts of England: his croak over head is not at all an uncommon sound. A pair of buzzards will occasionally circle aloft for a considerable time. The
snipe is found very early on the Forest, so much so that I have known in the month of July six killed in a day. The jack snipe particularly abounds about ‘the Dam Pool.’ The bittern has been twice shot near the same spot within the last twenty years. The seagull skims over occasionally from the Severn side. The water-ousel is frequently met with on the Forest brooks. The cross-bill comes sometimes into the neighbourhood. The turtle-dove particularly abounds, so that in early summer our woods are in a charm with their soft purring. The fern owls are very numerous. I once came on a considerable flock of the rare bird, the siskin. The titmouse tribe are abundant; but we never see the rarer species, the bearded or the crested tit. The chats and the wheatear are of course common. The woodpeckers are very common: even the two pied species might be obtained here with very little trouble. We are all over willow wrens in the spring. On the whole, I should say that it is a neighbourhood unfavourable for the observation of birds; and yet, were an observant naturalist to come among us, he would soon astonish us by what he would discover.”
THE TIMBER.
Most strangers visiting the Forest do so in the expectation of seeing groves of stately timber covering the ground in every direction, and are much disappointed when they find the greater part to consist of oaks, barely fifty years old, comprised in enclosures, and the remainder of the surface disfigured by furnaces, collieries, and groups of inferior buildings. The Forest as it existed in the days of the Norman and Plantagenet kings, William I. and John, who resorted to it for the pleasures of the chase, when its dark recesses often concealed noble fugitives, or disposed its population to habits of violence and plunder, or at a still later period, when its stately trees had become objects of apprehension or jealousy to the Spaniards, was widely different from what it is at
present. Few of the trees of those days have survived the fellings, spoliations, and storms of succeeding ages. According to Mr. Pepys, “a great fall” in Edward III.’s reign left only those which in his time were called “forbid trees,” to be further reduced by the requirements of seventy-two iron forges, which then lit up the district, or the yet more voracious furnaces by which they were succeeded. One storm alone, viz. that of the 18th of February, 1662, prostrated in one night 1,000 oaks, and as many beech, whilst only 200 were, it is said, left standing after the wholesale fellings perpetrated by Sir John Winter. Of these select few, the venerable “Jack of the Yat,” near the Coleford and Mitcheldean Road on the top of “The Long Hill,” appears to be one.
Mr. Machen thinks it the most ancient tree in the Forest, and probably four or five hundred years old. It is of the Quercus robur kind, or old English oak, the stalks of its acorns being long, with rarely more than one acorn on a stalk, and the stalks of its leaves short. A few years back it was struck by lightning, which has left a deep groove on its trunk. In 1830 it measured, at 6 feet from the ground, 17 feet 8¾