, FOR THE PEOPLE ! FOR EDVCATION 1 FORSCIENCE [ LIBRARY OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY .4* [SS^ BIRDS I^" LONDON o 'THK CIlOW WITH UIH VOICE OF CARE 1^ BIRDS IN LONDON BY W. H. HUD^OX, I^Z.^ ILLUSTRATED BY BRYAN HOOK. A. D. McCORMICK AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS FROM NATURE BY R B. LODGE LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 39 PATEENOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1898 All risrhtiJ reserveil ^^''^ PREFACE The openino- cliai)ter contains, by way of intro- duction, all that need be said concernino- the object and scope of this work ; it remains to say here that, as my aim has been to furnish an account of the London wild bird life of to-day, there was little help to l)e had from the writings of previous oi)servers. These mostly deal with the central parks, and are interesting now, mainly, as showing the chano-es that haye taken })lace. At the end of tlie volume a list will be found of the papers and jjooks on the sidjject which are known to me. This list will strike man}^ readers as an exceedingly meagre one, when it is remembered that London has always been a home of ornitholooists — that from the days of Oliver Goldsmith, who wrote pleasantly vi HIL'DS IX LOXIULX of tlu- Tianjilr (lardens rookery, and of Thomas rennant aiul his friend Daines Harrington, there have never l)een wanting ()l3servers of the wild hird \\i\- within onr gates. Tlie fact remains tliai. with the ex('e})tion of a few incidental passages to be fonnd in varions ornithological works, notliing was expressly wiitten ahout the birds of London nntil James Jennings's • Ornithologia ' saw the light a little over seventy vears ago. Jemiings's work was a poem, probably the worst ever written in the English language; bnt as he inserted copious notes, fortunat(4y in prose, embodying his own oljser- vations on the bird life of east and south-east London, the book has a very considerable interest for us to-day. Nothing more of impor- tance appeared until tlie late Shirley Ilibberd's lively papei- on ' London L)irds ' in 18G5. From that date oiiw.'ird the subject has atti'acted an increased attention, and at ])r(^sent we have a imniber of London or park natui'alists, as they might ])(' railed, who \icw the resident London species as adajjtfd to an urban life, and who chroni^'h- their ob^ciwilions in the "• field." PEE FACE vii ' Nature,' ' Zoologist,' ' Nature Notes,' and other natural liistor}' journals, and in the newspapers and magazines. To return to the present work. Treating of actualities I have been obliged for the most part to gather my own materials, relying perhaps too much on my own observation ; since London is now too vast a field for any person, however diligent, to know it intimately in all its extent. Probably any reader who is an observer of birds on his own account, and has resided for some years near a park or other open space in London, will be able to say, by way of criticism, that I have omitted some important or interest- inor fact known to him — something that ought to have had a place in a work of this kind. In such a case I can only plead either that the fact was not known to me, or that I had some good reason for not using it. Moreover, there is a limit to the amount of matter which can be included in a book of this kind, and a selection had to be made from a large number of facts and anecdotes I had got together. viii /^/7.7).S' IX LONDON All tlie matter contained in this book, with the exception of one article, or part of an article, on r.ondon l>irds. in the ' Saturday Keview," now a{)p('ars l"or the first time. In conclusion, I have to express my warm thanks to those who have helped me in my task, 1)\ snpplvino* me with fresh infoi'ination. and in other ways. W. H. H. i...M...N : A2>nl, 1«98. CONTENTS CHAPTEE I THE BIRDS AND THE BOOK PACK A handbook of London birds considered — Keasons for not writing it — Changes in the character of the wild bird population, and supposed cause — The London sparrow — Its abundance — Bread-begging habits — Monotony'' — Its best appearance — Beautiful finches — Value of open spaces — The sparrows' afternoon tea in Hyde Park — Purpose of this book ....... 1 CHAPTER II CEOWS IX LONDON A short general account of the London crows — The magpie — The jay — London ravens — The Enfield ravens — The Hyde Park ravens — The Tower ravens — The carrion crow, rook, and jackdaw ...... 20 CHAPTER III THE CAKEION CROW IN THE BALANCE The crow in London — Persecuted in the royal parks — Degi^adation of Hyde Park^ — Ducks in the Serpentine : BIBDS IN LONDON pa(;k how tlicy are thinued — Shooting a chicken with a revolver — Habits of the Hyde Park mallard — Anecdotes —Number of London crows — The crow a long-lived bird : a bread -eater — Anecdote — Seeks its food on the river — The crow as a pet — Anecdotes .... 82 CHAPTEE IV THE LONDON DAW Rarity of the daw in London — Pigeons and daws com- pared— -Esthetic value of the daw as a cathedral bird — Kensington Palace daws ; their disposition and habits — Friendship with rooks — "Wandering daws at Clissold Park — Solitary daws — Mr. Mark Melford's birds — Rescue of a hundred daws — The strange history of an . egg-stealing daw — White daws— Wliite ravens — Wil- lughby's speculations — A suggestion .... 52 CHAPTEE V EXPULSION OF THE ROOKS Positions of the rook and crow compared Gray's Inn Gardens rookery — ]keak-up of the old, and futile attempt of the birds to establish new rookeries — The rooks a great loss to London — Why the rook is esteemed — Incidents in the life of a tame rook — A first sight of tiie Kensington Gardens rookery — The true history of the expulsion of the rooks — A desolate scene, and a vision of London beautified ..... (IH CilAI'TEE Vi llECENT COLONISTS 'I'Ik- wooi:iu;iNc; TiiK Last .Iavkn Thk Lady am> thk 1 >a\v .... LONKON (ituw^ . . . . J)aiuhuk on Nkst London Staklin(;s ...... FlKLDFARES AT THK TOWEK .... WuOD-l'KiKON FkEDIN(t ON Ha\VS . . . . KaVENSCOUUT i'AKK ...... COKMOR.VNTS AT St. ,L\M1:SS PaRK ])ABcnicK Feedin(; its Young. NlGHTINc;.\LE ON ITS N EST . . . . . Chaffinch ........ Starling at Home 1>ahchi<;k"s Floating Xest : St, James's Park l'.\GK 11 •21 60 m iiy 181 186 153 170 189 249 271 808 829 BIRDS IN LONDON CHAPTEE I THE BIRDS AND THE BOOK A handbook of London birds considered — Reasons for not writing it— Changes in the character of the wild bird population, and supposed cause — The London sparrow — Its abundance — Bread-begging habits — Monotony — Its best appearance — Beautiful finches— Value of open spaces — The sparrows' afternoon tea in Hyde Park — Purpose of this book. Among the many little schemes and more or less good intentions which have flitted about my brain like summer flies in a room, there was one for a small volume on London birds ; to contain, for principal matter, lists of the species resident throughout the year, of the visitants, regular and occasional, and of the vanished species which have inhabited the metropolis in recent, former, or historical times. For everyone, even the veriest Dryasdust among us, has some glow of poetic feeling in him, some lingering regret B 2 BIRDS IN LONDON fc»r the beautiful that has vanished and returneth not : consequently, it would be hard in treating of London bird life not to go back to times wliich now seem very ancient, when the kite was connnon — the city's soaring scavenger, protected by law, just as the infinitely less attractive turkey-buzzard is now protected in some towns of the western world. Again, thanks to Mr. Har ting's researches into old records, we have the account of beautiful white spoonbills, associated with herons, building their nests on the tree-tops in the Bishop of London's orounds at Fulham. To leave this fascinating theme. It struck me at first that the book vaguely contemplated might be made useful to lovers and students of bird life in London ; and I was also encouraged 1)V tlie thouirht that the considerable amount of printed material which exists relating to the subject would make the task of writing it com- paratively easy. l)Ul I no sooner looked attentively into the subject than I saw how di Hi cult it really was, and how unsatisfactory, and T might almost add useless, tlic work would ])rove. To Ix'L'in willi. wliat is London ? Tt is a THE BIBDS AND THE BOOK 3 very big town, a 'province covered with houses'; but for the ornithologist wliere, on any side, does the province end ? Does it end five miles south of Charing Cross, at Sydenham, or ten miles further afield, at Downe ? Or, looking north, do we draw the line at Hampstead, or Aldenham ? The whole metropolitan area has, let us say, a circumference of about ninety miles, and within its outermost irregular boundary there is room for half a dozen concentric lines, each of which will contain a London, difFerinu" o-reatlv in size and, in a much less degree, in character. If the list be made to include all the birds found in such rural and even wild places — woods, thickets, heaths, and marshes — as exist within a sixteen- mile radius, it is clear that most of the inland species found in the counties of Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, Hertfordshire, and Essex would be hi it. The fact is, in drawing up a list of London birds, the writer can, within limits, make it as long or sliort as he thinks proper. Thus, if he wishes to have a long list, and is partial to round numbers, he will be able to get a centurv of species by making his own twelve or thirteen mile radius. Should he then alter his mind, 4 BIRDS IN LONDON and think that a modest fifty would content him, all he would have to do to get that number would be to contract his line, bringing it some- where near the indeterminate borders of inner London, where town and country mix or pass into each other. Now a handbook written on this plan would be useful only if a very exact boundary were drawn, and the precise locality given in which each resident or breeding species had its haunts, where the student or lover of birds could watch or listen for it with some chance of being rewarded. Even so, the book would not serve its purpose for a longer period than two or three years ; after three years it would most certainly be out of date, so great and continuous is the growth of London on all sides. Thus, going round London, keeping to that partly green indeterminate borderland already mentioned, there are many little hidden rustic spots where in the summer of 181)7 the wood- pecker, green and spotted, and the nuthatch and tree-creeper bred ; also the nightingale, bottle- tit, and wryneck, and jay and crow, and kestrel and wliite and brown owl ; ])ut wlio can say that they will breed in the same places in 1 81)9, or even in 181)8? For these litlle i-rccn rustic THE BIBDS AND THE BOOK 5 refuges are situated on the lower slopes of a volcano, wliich. is always in a state of eruptioii, and year by }^ar they are being burnt up and obliterated by ashes and lava. After I had at once and for ever dropped, for the reasons stated, all idea of a handbook, the thought remained that there was still much to be said about London bird life which mio-ht be useful, although in another way. The sub- ject was often in my mind during the summer months of 1896 and 1897, which, for my sins, I was compelled to spend in town. During this wasted and dreary period, when I was often in the parks and open spaces in all parts of London, I was impressed more than I had been before with the changes constantly going on in the character of the bird population of the metro- polis. These changes are not rapid enough to show a marked difference in a space of two or three years ; but when we take a period of fifteen or twenty years, they strike us as really very great. They are the result of the gradual decrease in numbers and final dying out of many of the old-established species, chiefly singing birds, and. at the same time, the appearance of 6 BIBDS IN LONDON other species previously unknown in London, and their increase and diffusion. Considering these two facts, one is inclined to say off-hand that the diminution or dying out of one set of species is siniph^ due to the fact that the}^ are incapable of thriving in the conditions in which they are placed ; that the London smoke is fatal in the long run to some of the more delicate birds, as it undoubtedly is to the rose and other plants that require pure air and plenty of sunshine ; and that, on the other hand, the new colonists that are increasing are species of a coarser fibre, greater vitalit}^, and able, like the plane-tree in the plant world, to thrive in .such conditions. It is really not so : the tits and finches, the robin, wren, hedge-sparrow, pied wagtail, some of the warblers, and the missel-thrush, are as vigorous and well able to live in London as the wood-pigeon. They are, moreover, very much more prolific than the pigeon, and find their food with greater ease. Yet we see that these lively, active species are dying out, while the slow, heavy dove, wliicli must eat largely to live, and lays but two eggs on a frail platform of sticks for nest, is rapidly increasiu<>\ THE BIBBS AND THE BOOK 7 Here then, it seemed, was a subject which it might be for the advantage of the bird-lovers in London to -t^onsider ; and I write in the con- viction that there are as many Londoners who love the sight and sound of wild bird life as there are who find refreshment in trees and grass and flowers, who are made glad by the sight of a blue sky, to whom the sunshine is sweet and pleasant to behold. In going about London, after my mind had begun to dwell on this subject, I was frequently amused, and sometimes teased, by the sight and sound of the everywhere-present multitudinous sparrow. Li London there are no grain-growers and market-gardeners, consequently there is no tiresome sparrow question, and no sparrow-clubs to vex the tender-hearted. These sparrows were not to be thought about in their relation to agriculture, but were simply little birds, too often, in many a weary mile, in many an unlovely district, the only representatives of the avian class, flying to and fro, chirping and chirruping from dawn to dark ; nor birds only : I had them also for butterflies, seen sometimes in crowds and clouds, as in the tropics, with no 8 BIBD:S in LONDON rich nor splendid colouring on their wings ; and I had them for cicadas, and noisy locusts of arboreal habits, hundreds and thousands of them, whirring in a subdued way in the park trees during the sultry hours. They were all these things and scavengers as well, ever busy at their scavengering in the dusty and nois\' ways ; everywhere finding some organic matter to comfort their little stomachs, or to carry to their nestlings. At times the fanciful idea would occur to me that I was on a commission appointed to inquire into the state of the wild bird life of London, or some such subject, and that my fellow commissioners were sparrows, so in- cessantly were they with me, though in greatly varying numbers, during my perambulations. After all, the notion that they attended or accompanied me in my walks was not wholly fanciful. For no sooner does any person enter any public garden oi- park, or other open space where there are trees, than, if he l)e not too absorbed in his own thoughts, he will see that several sparrows are keepii^g him company, flying from tree to tree, or bush to bush, alighthig occasionally on the grcjund near him, watching THE BIllDS AND THE BOOK 9 liis every movement ; and if he sit down on a chair or bench several of them will come close to him, and top this way and that before him, uttering a little plaintive note of interrogation — Have you got nothing for us ? They have come to look on every human being who walks among the park trees and round the garden-beds as a mere perambulating machine for the distribution of fragments of bread. The sparrow's theory or philosophy of life, from our point of view, is very ridiculous, but he finds it profitable, and wants no better. I remember that during those days, when the little creatures were so much with me, whether I wanted them or no, some person wrote to one of the newspapers to say that he had just made the acquaintance of the connnon sparrow in a new character. The sparrow was and always had been a familiar bird to him, but he had never previously seen it gathered in crowds at its ' afternoon tea ' in Hyde Park, a spectacle which he had now witnessed with surprise and pleasure. If (I thought) this innumerous feathered company could only be varied somewhat, the modest plumage retouched, by Nature, with 10 BIIWS IN LONDON harmonious olive green and yellow tints, pure izreys and pure browns, Avitli rose, carmine, tile and chestnut reds; and if the monotonous little hurly forms could be reshaped, and made in some cases larger, in others smaller, some burlier still and others slimmer, more delicate and aerial in appearance, the spectacle of their afternoon tea would be infinitely more attractive and refreshing than it now is to many a Londoner's tired eyes. Their voices, too — for the refashioned mixed crowd Avould have a various language, like the species that warble and twitter and call music- ally to one another in orchard and copse — would give a new and strange delight to the hstener. Xo doubt the sparrow is, to quote the letter- writer's expression, ' a jolly little fellow,' quite friendly with his supposed enemy man, amusing in liis tea-table manners, and deserving of all the praise and crumbs we give him. He is even more. To those who liave watched him begging for and dei'tly catching small scraps of l)read, suspended like a hawk-moth in the air l)efore the giving hand, displaying his conspicuous black gorget and the pale asli coloui- of his under THE BIRDS AND THE BOOK 11 surface, while his rapidly vibratin.u wings are made silky and translucent by the sunlight PARK SPARROW BEGGING passing through them, he appears, indeed, a pretty and even graceful creature. But he is, after all, only a common sparrow, a mean repre- sentative of bird life in our midst ; in all the assthetic qualities which make birds charming — beauty of form and colour, grace of motion, and melody — less than the least of the others. Therefore to greatly praise him is to pubhsh 12 BIRDS IN LONDON our iiiiiorance, or, at all events, to make it appear that lie is admired because, being numerous and familiar with man, he has been closely and well looked at, while the wilder and less common species have only been seen at a distance, and therefore indistinctly. A distinguished American writer on birds once visited England in order to make the acquaintance of our most noted feathered people, and in his haste pronounced the chaffinch the ' prettiest British songster.' Doubtless he had seen it oftenest, and closely, and at its best ; but he would never have exjDressed such an opinion if he had properly seen many other British singing birds ; if, for instance (confining our- selves to the fringilline family), he had seen his ' shilfa's ' nearest relation, the brambling, in his black dress beautifully variegated with bull and brown ; or the many-coloured cirl-bunting ; or that golden image of a bird, the yellow- hammer ; or the green siskin, ' that lovely little oddity,' seeking his food, tit-like, among the pHie needles, or clinging to pendulous twigs ; or the linnet in his spring plumage — pale grey and richest brown and carmine — singing among ilic flowery gorse ; or tlie goldfincli, flit ling THE BIIWS AND THE BOOK 13 amidst the apple-bloom in May, or feeding on the thistle in Jnly and August, clinging to the downy liends, twittering as he passes from plant to plant, showing his gay livery of crimson, black, and gold ; or the sedentary bullfinch, a miniature hawk in appearance, with a wonder- ful rose-coloured breast, sittinof anions? the clustering leaves of a dark evergreen — yew or holly. Beautiful birds are all these, and there are others just as beautiful in other passerine families, but alas ! they are at a distance from us ; they live in the country, and it is only that small ' whiff of the country ' to be enjoyed in a public park which fate allows to the majority of Londoners, the many thousands of toilers from year's end to year's end, and their wives and children. To those of us who take an annual holiday, and, in addition, an occasional run in the country, or who are not bound to town, it is hardly possible to imagine how much is meant by that little daily or weekly visit to a park. Its value to the confined millions has accordingly never been, and probably cannot be, rightly estimated. For the poor who have not those L-i BTRDS IN LONDON periods of refreshment which others consider so necessary to tlieir health and contentment, the change from the close, adulterated atmosphere of the workshop and the living-room, and stone- paved noisy street, to the open, green, compara- tively quiet park, is indeed great, and its benefit to body and mind incalculable. The sight of the sun ; of the sky, no longer a narrow strip, but wide, infinite over all ; the freshness of the uncontined air which the lungs drink in ; the green expanse of earth, and large trees standing apart, away from houses — all this produces a shock of strange pleasure and quickens the tired pulse with sudden access of life. In a small way — sad it is to think in how small a way! — it is a return to nature, an escape for the moment from the prison and sick-room of un- natural conditions; and the larger and less artificial the park or open space, and the more abounding in wild, especially bird, life, the more restorative is tlie effect. It is indeed invariably the animal life which exei'cises the greatest attraction and is most exhilarating. It is really pathetic to see how mail}' persons of the working class (!ome every day, all tlic yeai' round, but especially in the THE BIRDS AND THE BOOK 15 summer months, to that mhiute traDScript of wild nature in Hyde Park at the spot called the Dell, where t!ie Serpentine ends. They are drawn thither by the birds — the multitude of sparrows that gather to be fed, and the wood- pigeons, and a few moorhens that live in the rushes. ' I call these my chickens, and I'm obliged to come every day to feed them,' said a paralytic- lookino' white-haired old man in the shabbiest clothes, one evening as I stood there ; then, taking some fragments of stale bread from his pockets, he began feeding the sparrows, and while doing so he chuckled with delight, and looked round from time to time to see if the others were enjoying the spectacle. To him succeeded two sedate-looking labourers, big, strong men, with tired, dusty faces, on their way home from work. Each produced from his coat-pocket a little store of fragments of bread and meat, saved from the midday meal, carefully wrapped up in a piece of newspaper. After bestowing their scraps on the little brown-coated crowd, one spoke : ' Come on, mate, they've had it all, and now let's go home and see what the missus has got for 16 BIBDS IN LONDON our tea ' ; and home they trudged across the park, with hearts refreshed and lightened, no doubt, to be succeeded by others and still others, London workmen and their wives and children, until the sun had set and the birds were all o-one. Here then is an object lesson which no person who is capable of reading the emotions ill the countenance, who has any sympathy wath his fellow-creatures, can fail to be impressed by. Not only at that spot in Hyde Park may it be seen, but at all the parks and open spaces in London ; in some more than others, as at St. James's Park, where the gulls are fed during the winter months, and at Battersea and Eegent's Parks, where the starlings congregate every evening in July and August. What we see is the perpetual hunger of the heart and craving of those who are compelled to live apart from Nature, who have oidy these momentary glimpses of her face, and of the refreshment they ex- perience at sight of trees and grass and water, and, above everything, of wild and glad animal Hfe. How ini])()rtant, tlien, tliat the most should be mad(^ of our few suitable open spaces; that everytliing ])08sible sliould be done to maintain THE BIRDS AND THE BOOK 17 in tliein an abundant and varied wild bird life ! Unfortunately, this has not been seen, else we should not h^^e lost so much, especially in the royal parks. In some of the parks under the County Council there are great signs of im- provement, an evident anxiety to protect and increase the stock of wild birds ; but even here the most zealous of the superintendents are not fully conscious of the value of what they are themselves doing. They are encouraging the wild birds because they are considered ' orna- ments ' to the park, just as they plant rhodo- dendrons and other exotic shrubs that have big gaily-coloured flowers in their season, and as they exhibit some foreign bird of gorgeous plumage in the park aviary. They have not yet grasped the fact — I hope Mr. Sexby, the excellent head of the parks department, will pardon my saying it — that the feathered inhabi- tants of our open spaces are something more than ' ornaments ' ; tliat the sight and sound of any wild bird, from the croaking carrion crow to the small lyrical kitty wren or tinkling tom- tit, will afford more pleasure to the Londoner — in other words, conduce more to his health and c 18 BIBDS IX LONDON happiness — than all the gold pheasants and other brightly-apparelled prisoners, native and foreign, to be seen in the park cages. From the foregoing it will be seen that this little book, which comes in place of the one I had, in a vague way, once thought of writing, is in some degree a book with a purpose. Birds are not considered merely as objects of interest to the ornithologist and to a few other persons — objects or creatures which the great mass of the people of the metropolis have really nothing to do with, and vaguely regard as some- thing at a distance, of no practical import, or as wholly unrelated to their urban life. Eather they are considered as a necessary part of those pleasure- and health-giving transcripts of nature which we retain and cherish as our best pos- sessions— the open sun-lit and tree-shaded spaces, ureen with <^n-ass and bri<2:ht with water: so im- j)ortant a part indeed, as bringing lionu^ to us that glad fi'eedom and wildness which is our best medicine, that without it all the rest would lose much of its virtue. P)iit oi» lliis point — the extreme pleasure THE BllllJS AND THE BOOK 19 wliich the confined Londoner experiences in seeing and hearing wild l)irds, and the conse- quent vahie oT our wild bird life — enough has been said in this place, as it will be necessary to return to the subject in one of the concluding chapters. 20 BIBDS IN LONDON CHAPTER II CROWS IN LONDON A short general account of the London crows — The magpie The jay — London ravens — The Enfield ravens — The Hyde Park ravens — The Tower ravens — The carrion crow, rook, and jackdaw. Theee are not many crows in London ; the number of the birds that 'dve left are indeed few% and, if we exclude the magpie and jay, there are only three species. But the magpie and jay cannot be left out altogether, when we find both species still existing at a distance of six and a half to seven miles from Charing Cross. The magpie is all but lost; at the present time there are no more than four birds inhabiting inner r^ondon, doubtless escaped from captivity, and afraid to leave tlie parks in which they found refuge — those islands of verdure in the midst of a sea, or desert, of houses. One bird, the sur- vivoi-of a pair, has his home in St. James's Park, and is tlie most intci-csting figure in that haunt CBOWS IN LONDON 21 of birds ; a spirited creature, a great hater and persecutor of the carrion crows when they come. The other three consort together m Eegent's Park ; once or twice they have built a nest, but THE LAST RAVEN failed to hatch their eggs. Probably all three are females. When, some time ago, the ' Son of the Marshes ' wrote that the magpie had been extirpated in his own county of Surrey, and that to see it he should have to visit the London parks, he made too much of these escaped birds, which may be numbered on the fingers of one hand. Yet we know that the pie was formerly — even in this 22 BIRDS IN LONDON century — quite common in London. Yarrell, in his ' British Birds,' relates that he once saw twenty-three togetlier in Kensington Gardens. In these gardens they bred, probably for the last time, in 1856. Xor, so far as I know, do any magpies survive in the woods and thickets on the outskirts of the metropolis, except at two spots in the south-west district. The fate of the last pair at Hampstead has been related by Harting, in Lobley's ' Hampstead Hill ' (London, 1889). For several years this pair had their nest in an unclimbable tree at the Grove ; at length, one of the pair was shot by a local bird-stuffer, after which the surviving bird twice found and returned with a new mate ; but one by one all were killed by the same miscreant. It would be easy enough for any person to purchase a few magpies in the market and liberate them in St. James's and Eegent's Parks, and other suitable places, where, if undisturbed, they would certainly breed ; but I fear that it would iiol be an advisable thing to do at present, on account of tlie very strong prejudice which exists against this liandsome bird. Thus, at St. James's Park the one surviving bird is ' one too many,' according lo the keepers. 'One for CIWWS IN LONDON 23 sorrow * is an old saying. He is, they say, a robber and a teaser, dangerous to the ornamental water-fowl in'*the breeding season, a great per- secutor of the wood-pigeons, and in summer never happy unless he has a pigeon's egg in his beak. It strikes one forcibly that this is not a faithful portrait — that the magpie has been painted all black, instead of black and white as nature made him. At all events, we know that durino' the first two or three decades of the present century there was an abundant and varied wild bird life in the royal parks, and that at the same time the magpies were more numerous there than they are now known to l)e in any forest or wild place in England. The jay does not inhabit any of the inner parks and open spaces ; nor is there any evidence of its having been a resident London species at any time. But it is found in the most rural parts and in the wooded outskirts of the metro- polis. Its haunts will be mentioned in the chap- ters descriptive of the parks and open spaces. There is no strong prejudice against the jay among the park keepers, and I am glad to know that, in two or three parks, attempts will be made shortly to introduce this most beautiful 24 BIRDS IN LONDOX of British birds. It is to be hoped that when we liave ardens as a hiding place for pliinderof this kind. At length CBOWS IN LONDON 27 the raven disappeared — some one had stolen him ; but after an absence of several weeks he reappeared in the park with clipped wings. His disposition, too, had suffered a change : he moped a good deal, and finally one morning was found dead in the Serpentine. It was surmised that he had drowned himself from grief at having been deprived of the power of flight. A few ravens have since visited London. In 18-30 a keeper in Eegent's Park observed two of these birds engaged in a savage fight, which ended in the death of one of the combatants. In March 1890 a solitary raven appeared in Kensington Gardens, and remained there for several weeks. A keeper informed me that it was captured, and taken away. If this unfor- tunate raven had known his London better, he would not have chosen a royal park for a residence. Was this Kensington raven, it has been asked, a wild bird, or a strayed pet, or an escaped captive ? I believe the following incident will throw some light on the question. For many years past two or three ravens have usually been kept at the Tower of London. About seven years ago, as near as I can make 2S BIRDS IN LONDON out, there were two birds, male and female, and tliey paired and set to work building a nest on a tree. By and by, for some unknown reason, they demolished the nest they had made and started building a new one in another place. This nest also failed to satisfy them and was pulled to pieces like the fiist, and another begun ; and finally, after half a dozen such attempts, the cock bird, who was a strong- flyer, abandoned the task altogether and took to roaming about London, possibly in search of a new mate with a better knowledge of nest- building. It was his habit to mount up to a considerable height in the air, and soar about above the Tower, then to fly away to St. Paul's Cathedi'al, wliere he would perch on the cross above the dome and survey the raree-show beneath. Then he would winii; his wav to the docks, or in some other direction ; and day by day his wanderings over London were extended, until tlie owner or owners of the bird were warned that if his wings were not clipped he would, soon oi* hite, be lost. 1)1 It when it was at last resolved to cut his wings lie refused lo be caught. He had grown shy and suspicious, and ahliougli he came for CBOWS IN LONDON 29 food and to roost on one of the turrets every evening, he would not allow any person to come too near him. ** After some weeks of this semi- independent life he finally disappeared, havhig, as I believe, met his end in Kensington Gardens. His old mate ' Jenny,' as she is named, still lives at the Tower. I hear she has just been provided with a new mate. Three other crows remain — the carrion crow, rook, and jackdaw, all black but comely, although not beautiful nor elegant, like the bright vari-coloured jay and the black and white pie. Unfortunately they are a small remnant, and we are threatened with the near loss of one, if not of all. The first-named of this corvine trio is now the largest and most important wild bird that has been left to us ; if any as big or bigger appear, they are but casual visitors — a chance cormorant in severe weather, and the heron, that sometimes comes by night to the ornamental waters in the parks in search of fish, to vanish again, grey and ghostlike in the grey dawn. It is curious to find that the big, loud-voiced, hated carrion crow — so conspicuous and aggres- 30 BIRDS IN LONDON sive a bird — has a firmer hold on life in the metropolis than his two relations, the rook and daw ; for these two are sociable in habits and inclined to be domestic, and are everywhere inhabitants of towns. Or, rather, it would be strange but for the fact that the crow is less s^enerallv disliked in London than out of it. Xow, although these our three surviving crows are being left far behind in actual numbers by some other species that have only recently established themselves among us, and are moreover decreasing, and may be wholly lost at no distant date, they have been so long connected with London, and historically, as well as on account of their high intelligence and interesting habits, are so much more to us than the birds of other families, that I am tempted to write at considerable length about them, devoting a separate chapter to each species. I also cherish the ho])e that their threatened loss may yet be prevented ; doubtless every Londoner will agree that it would be indeed a pity to lose these old residents. It is a fact, although perhaps not a quite fainiliar one, lhat ihosc who reside in the metro- polis arc iiioT'c iiitei'csted in and have a kindlier CROWS IN LONDON 31 feeling for their wild birds than is the case in the rural districts. The reason is not far to seek : the pooi'^r we are the more do we prize our small belongings. A wind-fluttered green leaf, a sweet-smelling red rose, a thrush in song, is naturally more to a Londoner than to the dweller in mid-Surrey, or Kent, or Devon. 32 BIBDS IN LONDON CHAPTEE III THE CAKRION CROW IN THE BALANCE The crow in London — Persecuted m the royal parks — Degrada- tion of Hyde Park — Ducks in the Serpentine : how they are thinned — Shooting a chicken with a revolver — Habits of the Hyde Park mallard — Anecdotes — Number of London crows — The crow a long-lived bird ; a bread-eater — Anecdote — Seeks its food on the river — The crow as a pet — Anecdotes. The carrion crow has probably always been an inhabitant of the central parks ; at all events it is well known that for a long time past a pair bred annually in the trees on the north side of the Serpentine, down to within the last three years. As these birds took toll of the ducks' eggs and ducklings when they had a nest full of ravenous young to feed, it was resohed that they should no longer be tolerated ; thcMr nests were ordered to be pulled down and the old birds shot whenever an opportunity offered. Xow it is not the ITyde Park crows alone tlial will suffer if this ])olicy Ix' ndlicrcd to, bul llic Loudon crows jjcncralh' will Ix* in daiiiici- of THE CARBION CBO^Y IN THE BALANCE 33 extermination, for the birds are constantly passing and repassing across London, visiting all the parks where there are large trees, on their way to and from their various feeding- grounds. Hyde Park with Kensington Gardens is one of their favourite stopping places ; one or more pairs may be seen there on most mornings, frequently at noon again on their return to Eichmond, Kew, and Syon Park, and to the northern heights of London. (Jn the morning of October 10, 1896, I saw eight carrion crows, in pairs, perched at a considerable distance apart on the elm-tops near the palace in Kensington Gardens. After calhng for some time on the trees, they began to pursue and buflet one another with violence, making the whole place in the meantime resound with their powerful, harsh, grating cries. Their mock battle over, they rose to a considerable height in the air and went away towards Hammersmith. It seemed to me a marvellous thing that I had witnessed such a scene in such a place. But it is not necessary to see a number of carrion crows together to feel impressed with the appearance of the bird. There are few finer sights in the wild bird life of London than one 34 BIRDS IN LONDON of these visitors to the park on any autnnin or winter morning, when he will allow you to come quite near to the leafless tree on which he is perched, to stand still and admire his massive raven-like beak and intense black plumage orlossed with metalhc o-reen, as he sits flirting his wings and tail, swelling his throat to the size of a duck's egg, as, at intervals, he pours out a succession of raucous caws — the cry of a true savage, and the crow's ' voice of care,' as Chaucer called it. The crow is, in fact, the grandest wild bird left to us in the metropolis ; and after corre- sponding and conversing with a large number of persons on the subject, I find that in London others — most persons, I believe — admire him as much as I do, and are just as anxious that he should be preserved. It may be mentioned here that in two or three of the County Council's parks the superintendents protect and take pride in their crows. Why, then, should these few birds, which Londoners value, be destroyed in the royal parks for fear of the loss of a few ducklings out of the hundreds that are annually hatched and reared ? The ducks in the terpentine are very THE CABBION CROW IN THE BALANCE ' 35 numerous ; many bucketfuls of food — meal and grain — are gwen to them every day when they congregate at the boat-house, and they get besides large quantities of broken l^read cast to them by the public ; all day long, and every day when it is not raining, there is a continual procession of men, women, and children bringing food for the birds. Is it permissible'^to'^ask for whose advantage this large number of ducks is reared and fattened for the table at so small a cost ? Hyde Park is maintained by the nation, and presumably for the nation ; it is a national as well as a royal park ; is it not extraordinary that so noble a possession, the largest and most beautiful open space in the capital of the British empire, the chief city of the world, should be degraded to something like a poultry farm, or at all events a duck-breeding establishment, and that in order to get as much profit as possible out of the ducks, one of the chief ornaments of the park, the one representative of noble wild bird life that has survived until now in London, should be sacrificed ? Let us by all means have ducks, and many of them ; they are gregarious by nature and look well in flocks, and are a source of innocent D 2 36 BIBDS IN LONDON pleasure to numberless visitors to the parks, especially lo children and nursenuiids ; but let us not have ducks only — a great multitude of ducks, to the exclusion of other wilder and nobler birds. Personally, I am very fond of these ducks, although I have never had one on my table, and believe that I am as well able to appreciate their beauty and feel an interest in their habits as any of the gentlemen in authai^ity who have decreed that the carrion crow shall go the way of the raven in Hyde Park. I love them because they are not the ducks that have been made lazy and fat, with all their fine faculties dulled, by long domestication. They are the wild duck, or mallard, introduced many years ago into the Serpentine. Doubtless they have some domestic taint in them, since the young birds reared each season exhibit a very considerable variation in colour and markings. Those that vary in colour are weeded out each winter, and the original type is in tliis way preserved ; but not strictly preserved, as the weeding-out })rocess is carelessl)^ — I had almost said stupidly — per- formed. 'Jlic lliinning takes place in December, and at THE CARRION CROW IN THE BALANCE 87 that season people who hve in the vicinity of tlie park are startled each morning by the sound of firing, as at the'^covert side. The sub-ranger and his friends and underlings are enjoying their big annual shoot. And there is no reason why they should not have this sport, if it pleases them, and if by this means the object sought could be obtained. But it is not obtained, as anyone may see for himself; and it also seems a trifle ridiculous that any man can find sport in shooting birds accustomed to walk about among people's legs and feed out of little children's hands. Once upon a time, in a distant country, I came with a companion to a small farmhouse. We were very much in want of a meal, but no person was about, and the larder was empt}', and so we determined to kill and broil a chicken for ourselves. On our making certain chucklhig noises, which domestic birds understand, a numl3er of fowls scattered about near the place rushed up to us, expecting to be fed. We made choice of a very tall cockerel for our breakfast ; so tall was this young bird on his long, bright yellow stilt-like shanks that he towered head and neck above his fellows. My companion, 38 BIBDS IN LONDON who was an American, had a revolver in his pocket, and pulling it out he fired five shots at the bird at a distance of about six yards, but failed to hit it. He was preparing to reload his weapon,'.when, to expedite matters, I picked up a stick and knocked the chicken over, and in less than fifty minutes' time we were picking his bones. I doubt if the Hyde Park sportsmen will see anything very amusing in this story. The mallard is an extremely handsome fowl, and it is pleasant to see such a bird in flocks, at home on the ornamental waters, and at the same time to learn that it is, in a sense, a wild bird, that in the keenness of its faculties, its power of flight, and nesting habits it differs greatly from its degenerate domestic relation. By day he will feed from any person's hand ; in the evening he returns to his ancient wary habit, and will not sufler a person to approach him. He is active by night, particularly in the autumn, flying about the park and gardens hi small flocks and feeding on the grass. It is a curious and delightful experience to be alone on a damp autumn night in Kensington Gardens. One is surrounded by London ; its dull con- THE CABBION CROW IN THE BALANCE 39 tiiiuous inurinur maybe heard, and the gUiiting of distant lamps catches the eye through the trees ; these fitful gleoius and distant sounds but make the silence and darkness all the more deep and impressive. Suddenly the whistling of Avings is heard, and the loud startled cry of a mallard, as the birds, vaguely seen, rush by overhead ; the effect on the mind is wonderful — one has Ijeen transported as by a miracle into the midst of a wild and solitary nature. Both by day and night there is much going to and fro between the Serpentine and the Eound Pond, but each bird appears to be faithful to its home, and those that have been reared on the Eound Pond breed in its vicinity on the west side of the o-ardens. Where their eo-o-s are O CO deposited is known to few. Strange as it may seem, they nest in the trees, in holes in the trunks^of the large elms, in many cases at a heio'ht of thirty feet or more from the orround. Some of the breeding- trees are known, of others the secret has been well kept by the birds. Xot a few ducks breed in Holland Park, and find it an exceedingly difiicult matter to get their broods into the gardens. More than once the strange spectacle of a duck leading its newly- 40 BIRDS IN LONDON hatched voiinir alono- the throno-ed pavements .,00 ox of Kensino'ton IIii>h Street has been witnessed. When the young liave been hatched m a tree the parent bird takes them up in her beak and drops them one by one to the ground, and the fall does not appear to hurt them. Last year a duck bred in a tree broken off at the top near St. Gover's Well, in the gardens. One morning she appeared with four ducklings, and leaving them near the pond went back to the tree and in time returned with a second lot of four. Still she was not satisfied, but continued to go back to the tree and to fiy round and round it with a great clamour. A keeper who had been watching her movements sent for a man with a ladder to have the tree-top examined. The man found the broken stem hollow at the top, and by thrusting his arm down shoulder-deep was able to reach the bottom of the cavity with his hand. One duckling was found in it and res(,'ued, and its mother made happy. That slie had suc- ceeded in f^^ettinj^ all tlie others out of so deep and narrow a shaft seemed very as- tonishing. An extraordinary incident relating to these Kensiniiton ducks was told to me 1)\- one of the THE CARRION CROW IN THE BALANCE 41 keepers, who himself heard it by a very curious chance. One dark evening, after leaving the gardens, he g(Tt on to an omnibus near the Albert Hall to go to his home at Hammersmith. Two men who occupied the seat in front of him were talkino- about the i>-ardens and the birds, and he listened. One of the men related that he once succeeded in taking a clutch of ducks' eggs from the gardens. He put them under a hen at his home in Hammersmith, and nine ducklings were hatched. They were healthy and strong and grew up into nine as fine ducks as he had ever seen. Such fine birds were they that he was loth to kill or part with them, and before he had made up his mind what to do he lost them in a very strange way. One morning he was in his back yard, where his birds were kept, when a crow appeared flying by at a con- siderable height in the air ; instantly the ducks, with raised heads, ran together, then with a scream of terror sprang into the air and flew away, to be seen no more. Up till that moment they had never seen beyond the small back yard where they lived — it was their world — nor had any one of them ever attempted to use his wings. 42 BIBDS IN LONDON Let us now return to the nobler bird, the subject of this chapter. It would not, I imagine, be difficult for one who had the time to count the London crows ; those I am accustomed to see number about twenty, and I should not be surprised to learn that as many as forty crows frequent inner London. But with the exception of two, or perhaps three pairs, they do not now breed in London, but liaye their nesting-haunts in woods west, north, and east of the metropolis. These breeders on the outskirts bring the young they succeed in rearing to the parks, from which they have themselves in some cases been expelled, and the tradition is thus kept up. Most of the birds appear to fly over London every day, paying long visits on their way to Eegent's Park, Holland Park, the central parks, and Battersea Park. As their movements are very regular it would be possible to mark their various routes on a map of the metropolis. Mr. W. IL Tuck, writing to me about the carrion crow, says : ' For many years, when living in Kensington, several pairs of crows going from X.E. to S.W. passed at daybreak over my liouse on llicir way to the Thames THE CABBION CBOW IN THE BALANCE 43 banks at Chelsea, and I could always time them withm a minute or two.' These birds come on their way from feiie northern heights to the river at Chelsea ; the crows that breed in the neigh- bo urliood of Syon Park and Eichmond fly over the central parks to Westminster, and then follow the river down to its mouth. The persistency with which the carrion crow keeps to his nesting-place may be seen in the- case of a pair that have bred in private grounds at Hillfield, Hampstead, for at least sixty years. Nor is it impossible to believe that the same birds have occupied the site for this long period, the crow being a long-lived creature. The venerable author of ' Festus,' who also has the secret of long life, might have been thinking of this very pair when, more than half a century ago, he wrote his spirited lyric : — The cro^Y ! the crow I the great black crow ! He lives for a hundred years and mo' ; He lives till he dies, and he dies as slow As the morning mists down the hill that go. Go — go ! yon great black crow^ ! . But it's tine to live and die hke a great black crow. Many persons might be inclined to think that it must be better for the crow^ to have his 44 niBDS IN LONDON nest a little way out of the Imrly-burly, or at all events within easy reach of the country ; for how. they might ask, can this large flesh- eating, voracious creature feed himself and rear a nest full of young Avith cormorant appetites in London ? Eliza Cook, whose now universally neglected works I admired as a boy, makes the bird say, in her ' Song of the Crow ' : — I plunged my beak in the marbling cheek, I perched on the clammy brow ; And a dainty treat was that fresh meat To the greedy carrion crow. The unknown author of ' The Twa Corbies ' was a better naturalist as well as a better poet when he wrote — I'll pick out his bonny bhie een. But this relates to a time when the bodies of dead men, as well as of other large animals, were left lying promiscuously about ; in these ulti-a-civihsed days, when all dead things are (juickly and decently interred, the greedy carrion crow has greatly modified his feeding habits. Tn London, as in most places, lie takes whatever lie finds oil lh(^ laljle, and tliongh not in priiici])le THE CAEBION CEOW IN THE BALANCE 45 a vegetarian, tliere is no doubt that lie feeds largely on vegetable substances. Like the sparrow and other London birds, he has become with us a great bread-eater. Mr. Kempshall, the superintendent at Clissold Park, relates a curious story of this civilised taste in the crow. The park for very many years was the home of a pair of these birds. Unfortunately, when this space was opened to the public, in 1889, the birds forsook it, and settled in some large trees on private grounds in the neighbourhood. These trees were cut down about three years ago, whereupon the birds returned to Clissold Park ; but they have now again left it. One summer morning before the park was opened, when there were young- crows in the nest, Mr. Kempshall observed one of the old birds laboriously making his way across the open ground towards the nesting- tree, laden with a strange-looking object. This was white and round and three times as big as an orange, and the crow, flying close to the ground, was obliged to alight at short intervals, whereupon he would drop his pack and take a rest. Curious to know what he was carrying, the superintendent made a sudden rush at the 46 BIRDS IN LONDON bird, at a inoment when he had set his burden down, and succeeded in getting near enough to see that the white object was the round top part of a cottage loaf. But though the rush had been sudden and unexpected, and accompanied with a startling shout, the crow did not lose his head ; striking his powerful beak, or lylunging it, as Eliza Cook would have said, into the mass, he flopped up and struggled resolutely on until lie reached the nest, to be boisterously welcomed by his hungry family. They had a big meal, but perhaps grumbled a little at so much bread without any ghee. Probably the London crows get most of their food from the river. Very early every morning, as we have seen, they wing their way to the Thames, and at all hours of the day, when not engaged in breeding, crows may be seen travel- linfT up and down the river, usually in couples, from Barnes and Mortlake and higher up, down to the sea. They search the mud at low tide for dead fishes, garbage, l)read, and vegetable matter left by tlie water. Even when the tide is at its full tlie birds are still able to pick up something to eat, as they have borrowed the gull's habit of dropping upon the water to pick THE CARBION CBOW IN THE BALANCE 47 up any floating object which may form part of their exceedingly varied dietary. It is amusing to see the carrion c^row fishing up his dinner in this way, for he does not venture to fold his wings like the gull and examine and take up the morsel at leisure ; he drops upon the water rather awkwardly, wetting his legs and belly, but keeps working his wings until he has secured the floating object, then rises heavily with it in his beak. Another curious habit of some Lon- don crows in the south-west district, is to alight, dove-like, on the roofs and chimney-stacks of tall houses. In an article on this bird which appeared in the ' Fortnightly Eeview ' for May 1895,1 wrote : ' It sometimes greatly adds to our knowledge of any wild creature to see it tamed — not confined in any way, nor with its wings clipped, but free to exercise all its faculties and to come and go at will. Some species in this condition are very much more companionable than others, and probably none so readily fall into the domestic life as the various members of the crow family ; for they are more intelligent and adaptive, and nearer to the mammalians in their mental cha- racter than most birds. It is therefore curious 48 BIRDS IN LONDON to iind that the subject of this paper appears to be Httle known as a domestic bird, or pet. A caged crow, being next door, so to speak, to a dead and stuffed crow, does not interest me. Yet the crow strikes one as a bird with great possibihties as a pet : one would hke to observe liini freely associating with the larger unfeathered crows that have a different language, to learn by what means he communicates with them, to sound his depths of amusing devilry, and note tlie modulations of his voice ; for he, too, like other corvines, is loquacious on occasions, and much given to soliloquy. He is also a musician, a fact which is referred to by aEsop, Yarrell, and other authorities, but they have given us no proper description of his song. A friend tells me that he once kept a crow which did not prove a very interesting pet. This was not strancfe in the circumstances. The bird was an old one, just knocked down with a charge of shot, when lie was handed over in a dazed con- dition to my hiformant. He recovered from his wounds, but was always a very sedate bird. He had tlie run of a big old country house, and was one day observed in a croiicliiug attitude pressed tightly into the angle formed by the THE CARRION CROW IN THE BALANCE 49 wall and floor. He had discovered that the place was infested by mice, and was watching- a. crevice. The instant that a mouse put out a head the crow had him in his beak, and would kill him by striking him with lightninii- rapiditv two or three times on the floor, then swallow him. From that time mouse-catcliing was this bird's sole occupation and amusement, and he went about the house in the silent and stealthy manner of a cat. ' I am anxious to get the histor}^ of a tame crow that never had his wing-feathers clipped, and did not begin the domestic life as an old bird with several pellets of lead in his body.' Curiously enough, not long after this article appeared another bird-lover in London was asking the same question in another journal. This was Mr. Mandeville B. Phillips, of South Norwood, then private secretary to the late Archbishop of Canterbury. By accident he had become possessed of a carrion crow, sold to him as a young raven taken from a nest at Ely. This bird made so interesting a pet that its owner became desirous of hearing the experi- ences of others who had kept carrion crows. Mr. Phillips, in kindly giving me the history of E 50 BIBDS IN LONDON his bird, says that at different times he has kept ravens, daws, jays, and magpies, l)ut has never had so deho'htful a bird friend as the crow. It was a revelation to him to find what an in- teresting pet this species made. Xo other bird he had owned approached him in clever- ness and in multiplicity of tricks and devices : he could give the cleverest jackdaw points and win easily. If his bird was an average specimen of the race, he wondered that the crow is not more popular as a pet. This bird w^as fond of his liberty, but would always come to his master when called, and roosted every night in an out- house. Like the tame raven, and also like human beings of a primitive order of mind, he was excessively fond of practical jokes, and whenever lie found the dog or cat asleep he would steal (juietly up and administer a severe prod on the tail wdth his powerful beak. He would also fly into the kitchen when he saw the window open, to steal the spoons ; l)ut his chief deliaht was in a box of matches, which lie would carry off to pick to pieces and scatter the matches all over the place. He was extremely jealous of a tame raven and a jackdaw that sliared the house and liardcii willi liim, and THE CARBION CROW IN THE BALANCE 51 which he chose to reoard as rivals ; but this was his only mihappiness. The appearance of his master dressed in ' blazers ' always greatly affected him. It would, indeed, throw him into such a frenzy of terror that Mr. Phillips became careful not to exhibit himself in such bizarre raiment in the garden. My informant concludes, that he is not ashamed to say that he shed a few tears at the loss of this bird. I may add that I received a large number of letters in answer to my article on the carrion crow, but none of my correspondents in this country had any knowledge of the bird as a pet. In several letters received from America — the States and Canada — long histories of the common crow of that region as a pet bird were sent to me. 52 BIRDS IN LONDON CHAPTER IV THE LONDON DAW Rarity of the daw in London— Pigeons and daws compared — ^Esthetic value of the daw as a cathedral bird — Kensington Palace daws ; their disposition and habits — Friendship with rooks —Wandering daws at Clissold Park — Solitary daws — Mr. Mark Melford's birds — Rescue of a hundred daws — The strange history of an egg-stealing daw — White daws — White ravens — Willughby's speculations — A suggestion. It is somewhat curious to find that the jackdaw is an extremely rare bird in London — that, in fact, with the exception of a small colony at one spot, he is almost non-existent. At Eichmond Park, where pheasants (and the gamekeeper's traditions) are preserved, he was sometimes shot in the breeding season ; l)ut in the metropolis, so far as I know, he has never been persecuted. Yet there are few birds, certainly no member of the crow family, seemingly so w^ell adapted to a London life as lliis species. Throughout the kinfrdom he is a tamihar town bird ; in one English cathedral ovei- a hundred pairs have PIGEONS AT THE LAW COURTS THE LONDON DAW 53 their iiests ; and in that city and in many other towns the bird^ are accustomed to come to the gardens and window-sills, to be fed on scraps by their human neighbours and friends. While the daw^ has diminished wdth us, and is near to vanishing, the common pigeon — the domestic variety of the blue rock — has increased excessively in recent years. Large colonies of these birds inhabit the Temple Gardens, the Law Courts, St. Paul's, the Museum, and Westminster Palace, and many smaller settlements exist all over the metropolis. Now% a flock or cloud of parti- coloured pigeons rushing up and wheeling about the roofs or fronts of these imposing structures forms a very pretty sight ; but the daw^ toying with the wind, that lifts and blows him hither and thither, is a much more engaging spectacle, and in London we miss him greatly. I have often thought that it was due to the presence of the daw that I was ever able to get an adequate or satisfactory idea of the beauty and grandeur of some of our finest buildings. Watching the bird in his aerial evolutions, now suspended motionless, or rising and falling, then with half-closed wdngs precipitating himself downwards, as if demented, through vast 54 BIRDS IN LONDON distances, only to mount again witli an exulting cry, to soar beyond the highest tower or pinnacle, and seem at that vast height no bigger than a swift in size — watching him thus, an image of the structure over and around which he disported himself so gloriously has been formed — its vast- ness, stability, and perfect proportions— and has remained thereafter a vivid picture in my mind. How much would be lost to the sculptured west front of Wells Cathedral, the soaring spire of Salisbury, the noble roof and towers of York Minster and of Canterbury, if the jackdaws were not there ! I know that, compared with the images I retain of many daw-haunted cathe- drals and castles in the provinces, those of the cathedrals and other great buildings hi London have in my mind a somewhat dim and blurred appearance. It is a pity that, before consenting to rebuild St. PauVs Cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren did not make the perpetual maintenance of a colony of jackdaws a condition. And if he had bargained with posterity for a pair or two of peregrine falcons and kestrels, his glory at the present time would have been greater. There are, I believe, about sixteen hundred churches in London ; ])i'()babl\- nol nioiH* than THE LONDON BAW 55 three are now tenanted by the ' ecclesiastical daw.' *• On the borders of London — at Hampstead. Greenwich, Dulwich, Eichmond, and other points ■ — daws in limited numbers are to be met with ; in London proper, or inner London, there are no resident or breeding daws except the small colony of about twenty-four birds at Kensington Palace. Most of these breed in the hollow elms in Kensington Gardens ; others in trees in Holland Park. There is something curious about this small isolated colony : the birds are far less loquacious and more sedate in manner than daws are wont to be. At almost any hour of the day they may be seen sitting quietly on the higher branches of the tall trees, silent and spiritless. The wind blows, and they rise not to play with it ; the graceful spire of St. Mary Abbott's springs high above the garden trees and palace and neighbouring buildings, but it does not attract them. Occasionally, in winter, when the morning sun. shines bright and melts the mist, they experience a sudden return of the old frolicsome mood, and at such moments are capable of a very fine display, rushing over and among the tall elms in a black train, yelping o6 BIRDS IN LONDON like a pack of aerial hounds in hot pursuit ot some invisible quarry. A still greater excitement is exhibited by these somewhat dej)ressed and sedentary Ken- sington l)irds on the appearance of a flight of rooks ; for rooks, sometimes in considerable numbers, do occasionally visit or pass over London, and keep, when travelling east or west, to the wide green way of the central parks. Now there are few more impressive spectacles in bird life in this country than the approach of a large company of rooks ; their black forms, that loom so large as they successively appear, follow each other with slow deliberate motion at long intervals, moving as in a funeral procession, with appropriate solemn noises, which may be heard when they are still at a great distance. They are chanting something that corresponds in the corvine world to our Dead March in ' Saul.' The coming sound has a magical eflect on the daws ; their answering cries ring out loud and sharp, and hurriedly mounting to a considerable height in the air, they go out to meet the pro- cessionists, to mix with and accompany them a distance on the journey. It is to me a wonderful sight — more wonderful here in Kensington THE LONDON DAW 57 Gardens, which have long been rookless, than in any country pkce, and has reminded me of the meeting of two savage tribes or famihes, living far apart but cherishing an ancient tradition of kinship and amity, who, after a long interval, perhaps of years, when at last they come in siuht of each other's faces rush too-ether, burstinof into loud shouts of greeting and welcome. And one is really inclined to believe at times that some such traditional alliance and feeling of friendship exists between these two most social and human-like of the crow family. Besides this small remnant of birds native to London, flocks of jackdaws from outside occa- sionally appear when migrating or in search of new quarters. One morning, not long ago, a flock of fifteen came down at Clissold Park. They settled on the dovecote, and amused them- selves in a characteristic way by hunting the pigeons out of their boxes ; then, having cleared the place, they remained contentedly for an hour or two, dozing, preening their feathers, and conversing together in low tones. The bird- loving superintendent's heart was filled with joy at the acquisition of so interesting a colony ; but his rejoicing was premature, the loud call 58 BIBDS IN LONDON and invitation to fly was at last sounded, and hastily responded to — We hare vot come to stay — we are off — good-bye — so-long — farewell — and fortliwitli they rose up and flew away, probabl}^ in search of fresher woods and less trodden pastures than those of Clissold Park. There are also to be met with in London a few solitary vagrant daws which in most cases are probably birds escaped from captivity. Close to my home a daw of this description appears every morning at the house of a friend and demands his breakfast with loud taps on the window-pane. The generous treatment he has received has caused him to abandon his first suspicious attitude ; he now flies boldly into the house and explores the rooms, and is specially interested in the objects on the dressing-table. Articles of jewellery are carefully put out of sight when he makes a call. My friends, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Melford, of Fulham, are probably responsible ibr the exist- ence in London of a good number of wandering solitary jackdaws. They cherish a wonderful admiration and affection towards all the mem- bers of the crow family, and have had num- berless daws, jays, and pies as pets, or rather THE LONDON DAW 59 as guests, since their birds are always fre(^ to fly about t*ke house and go and come at pleasure. But their special fav^ourite is the daw, which they regard as far more intelligent, interesting, and companionable than any other animal, not excepting the dog. On one occasion ]\Ir. Melford saw an advertisement of a hundred daws to be sold for trap-shooting, and to save them from so miserable a fate he at once pur- chased the lot and took them home. They were in a miserable half-starved condition, and to give them a better chance of survival, before freeing them he placed them in an outhouse in his garden with a wire-netting across the door- way, and there he fed and tended them until they were well and strong, and then gave them their liberty. But they did not at once take advantage of it ; grown used to the place and the kindly faces of their protectors, they re- mained and were like tame birds about the house ; but later, a few at a time, at long intervals, they went away and back to their wild independent life. Of the many stories of their pet daws which they have told me, I will give one of a bird which was a particular favourite of Mrs. Melford's. 60 BIRDS IN LONDON His invariable habit was, on retnniing from an expedition aljroad, to iiy straight into the house in search of her, and, sitting on her head, to THK LA1>Y AND THE D\\\ express liis affection and dehght at rejoining her by passing his beak llnoiigji her Iiair. rnfortunately, lliis ])ii-d liad a weakness for THE LONDON DAW 61 eggs, which led him into many scrapes, and in the end very'-nearly proved his undoing. He was constantly hanging about and prying into the fowl-house, and whenever he felt sure that he was not observed he would slip in to purloin an egg. His cunning reacted on the fowls and made them cunning too. When he appeared they looked the other way, or walked off pre- tending not to see him ; but no sooner would he be inside eivploring the obscure corners for an egg than the battle-cry would sound, and then poor Jackie would find it hard indeed to escape from their fury with nothing worse than a sound drubbing. In a day or two, before his many sores and bruises had had time to heal, the cackling of a hen and the thought of a new-laid egg would tempt him again, and at length one day he could not escape ; the loud cries of rage and of vengeance gratified attracted some person to the fowl-house, where Jackie was found lyino; on the ground in the midst of a crowd of fowls engaged in pounding and pecking his life out, scattering his hated black feathers in all direc- tions He was rescued more dead than alive, and subsequently tended by his mistress with loving care. He lived, but failed to recover 62 BIBDS IN LONDON his old gay spirits ; day after day he moped in silence, a picture of abject misery, recalling in his half-naked, bruised, and bedraggled ap- pearance the famous bird of Rheims, the stealer of the turquoise ring, after the awful malediction of the Lord Cardinal Archbishop had taken effect: On crumpled claw. Came limping a poor little lame jackdaw, No longer gay As on yesterday ; His feathers all seemed to be turned the wrong way ; His pinions drooped, he could hardly stand, His head was as bald as the palm of your hand ; His eye so dim, So wasted each limb, That, heedless of grammar, they all cried * That's him ! ' By-and-by, when still in this broken-hearted and broken-feathered state, a sight to make his mistress weep, he disappeared ; it was con- jectured that some compassionate-minded neigh- bour, finding him in his garden or grounds, and seeing his pitiable rondition, had put an end to his misery. One day, a year latei-, Mrs. Melford, who was just recovering from an illness, was lying THE LONDON DAW 63 on a sofa in a room on the ground floor, when her husband, ACho was in the garden at the back, excitedly cried out that a wild jackdaw had just flown down and alighted near him. ' A j)erfect beauty ! ' he exclaimed ; never had he seen a jack- daw in finer plumage I Tlie lady, equally excited, called back, begging him to use every device to get the bird to stay. No sooner was her voice heard than the jackdaw rose up and dashed into the house, and flying the length of three rooms came to where she was lying, and at once alighted on her head and began passing his beak through her hair in the old manner. In no other way could this wild-looking and beautified bird have established his identity. His return was a great joy ; they caressed and feasted him, and for several hours, during which he showed no desire to renew his intercourse with the fowls, he was as lively and amusino- as he had ever been in the old days before he had got into trouble. But before night he left them, and has never returned since ; doubtless he had established relations with some of the wild daws on the outskirts of London. Before eiiding this chaj)ter I should like to say a word about white jackdaws. It is a 64 BIRDS IN LONDON mystery to me where all the albinos occasion- ally to be seen in the London bird markets come from. I have seen half a dozen in the hands of one large dealer, two at another dealer's, and several single birds at other shops ; altogether about sixteen or eighteen white daws on sale at one time. One often hears of and occasionally sees a white blackbird or other species in a wild state, but these uncoloured specimens are rare ; they are also dear to the collector (nobody knows why), and as a rule are not long permitted to enjoy existence. Besides, in nme cases out of ten the abnormally white birds are not albinos. They are probably mere ' sports,' like our domestic white pigeons, fowls, and ducks, and would doubtless be more common but for the fact that their whiteness is a disadvantage to tliem in their struggle for life. It is rather curious to find that among wild birds those that have a black plumage appear more subject to loss of colour than others. Thus we find that, of our small birds, whiteness is more counnon in the blackbird than in any other species. Within the last twelve to eighteen months I have known of the existence of seven or ei<>ht white THE LONDON DAW 65 or partly white blackbirds in London ; but during the saffie period I have not seen nor heard of a white thrush, and have only seen one white sparrow. My belief is that the species most commonly found with white or partly white plumage are the blackbird, rook, and daw. When carrion crows and ravens were abundant in this country it was probably no very unusual thing to meet with wdiite specimens. The old ornithologist, Willughby, writing over two centuries ago, mentions two milk-white ravens which he saw ; but the fact of their whiteness is less interesting to read at this distant date than the old author's delightful speculations as to the cause of the phenomenon. He doubts that white ravens were as common in this country as Aldrovandus had affirmed that they w^ere, and then adds : ' I rather think that they are found in those mountainous Northern Countries, which are for the o-reatest part of the year covered with snow : Where also many other Animals change their native colours, and become white, as Bears^ Foxes^ Blachhirdf^, &c., whether it proceeds from the force of imagi- nation, heightened by the constant intuition of Snow, or from the cold of the Climate, occasion- F 66 BIRDS IN LONDON in^ such a lano-uisliino' of colour ; as we see in old Age, when the natural heat decays, the hair Sfrows fifrev, and at last white.' To return to the subject of the beautiful albino daws, and the numbers sometimes seen in our bird markets. One can only say that the monster London throws its nets oyer an exceedingly wide area, capturing all rare and quaint and beautiful things for its own delight. Thiijking of these wonderful white daws, when I have cast up my eyes to the birdless towers and domes of our great London buildings, it has occurred to me to ask the following question : Is there not one among the many yery wealthy men in London, who annually throw away hundreds of thousands of pounds on their several crazes — is there not one to give, say, fifty or sixty pounds per annum to buy up all these beautiful albinos, at the usual price of one or two guineas per bird, for three or four years, and establish a colony at Westminster, or other suitable place, where thousands of p(iople would have great delight in looking at them everyday? For il would indeed be a strange and beautiful siglit, and many pei-sons would THE LONDON DAW 67 come from a distance solely to see the milk- white (laws soaring in the wind, as their custom IS, above the roofs and towers; and he who made such a gift to London would be long and very pleasantly remembered. F 2 68 BIRDS IN LONDON CHAPTER Y EXPULSION OF THE ROOKS Positions of the rook and crow compared — (Iray's Inn Gardens rookery — Break-up of the old, and fiitile attempt of the birds to estabUsh new rookeries— The rooks a great loss to London — Why the rook is esteemed — Incidents in the life of a tame rook — A first sight of the Kensington Gardens rookery — The true history of the expulsion of the rooks — A desolate scene, and a vision of London beautified. We have seen how it is with the carrion crow — that he is in the balance, and that if the park authorities will but refrain from persecuting him he will probably be able to keep his ancient place among the wild birds of London. To what has already been said on the subject of this bird I will only add here that there is, just now, an unfortunate inclination in some of the County Council's parks to adopt the policy of the I'oyal parks — to set too high a value on domestic and ornamental water-fowl, which, however beautiful and costly they may be, can never give as nuich pleasure or produce EXPULSION OF THE BOOKS 69 the same effect on the mind as the wild bird. Tlie old Lond^Tii crow is worth ]uore to London than many exotic swans and ducks and geese. We have also seen that the case of the jack- LONDON CROWS daw is not quite hopeless; for although the birds are now reduced to an insignificant remnant, the habits and disposition of this species make it reasonable to hope that they 70 BIRDS IX LONDON will thrive and increase, and, in any case, that if we want the daw we can have him. But the case of the rook appears to me well nigh hope- less, and on this account, in this list of the corvines, he is put kist that should have been first. There are nevertheless two reasons why a considerable space — a whole chapter — should be given to this species : one is, that down to within a few years ago the rook attracted the largest share of attention, and was the most important species in the wild bird life of the metropolis ; the other, that it would be well that the cause of its departure should not be forgotten. It is true that in the very heart of the metropolis a rookery still exists in Gray's Inn Gardens, and that although it does not increase neither does it diminish. Thus, during the last twenty years there have never been fewer than seventeen or eighteen, and never more than thirty nests in a season; and for the last three seasons tlie num- bers have been twent}'-five, twenty-three, and twenty-four nests. Going a little farther back in the history of this ancient famous colony, it is well to relate that, twenty- three years ago, it was well-nigh lost for ever through an uncon- sidered act of the Benchers, or of some ignorant EXPULSION OF THE BOOKS 71 person in authority among them. It was thought that tlie trees ^ould have a better appearance if a number of their large horizontal branches were lopped off, and the work was carried out in the month of March, just when the rooks were busy repairing their old and building new nests. The birds were seized with panic, and went away in a body to be seen no more for the space of three years ; then they returned to settle once more, and at present they are re- garded with so much pride and affection by the Benchers, and have so much food cast to them out of scores of windows, that they have grown to be the most domestic and stay-at-home rooks to be found anywhere in England. With the exception of this one small colony, it is sad to have to say that utter, irretrievable disaster has fallen on the inner London rookeries — those that still exist in the suburbs will be mentioned in subsequent chapters — and although rooks may still be found within our gates, go they will and go they must, never to return. The few birds that continue in constantly diminishing numbers to breed here and there in the metropolis, in spite of its gloomy atmo- sphere and the long distances they are obliged 72 BIRDS IN LONDON to travel in quest of grubs aud worms for their young, are London rooks, themselves hatched in parks and squares — the town has always been their home and breeding place ; and although it is more than probable that some of these town birds are from time to time enticed away to the country, it is indeed hard to believe that rooks hatched hi the rural districts are ever tempted to come to us. During the last dozen years many attempts at founding new colonies have been made by small bands of rooks. These birds were and are survivors of the old broken- up communities. All these incipient rookeries, containing from two or three to a dozen nests (as at Connaught Square), have failed ; but the birds, or some of them, still wander about in an aimless way in small companies, from park to park, and there is no doubt that year by year these homeless rooks will continue to decrease in number, until the ancient tradition is lost, and they will Ije seen no more. It is no slight loss which we have to lament ; it is the loss to the millions inhabiting this city, or congeries of cities and towns, of a bii-d wliich is more to us than any other wild bird, on account of its lar<>'e size and interestinir social EXPULSION OF THE HOOKS 73 habits, its high intelhgence, and tlie confidence it reposes in iMpan ; and, finally, of that ancient kindly regard and pride in it which, in some degree, is felt by all persons throughout the kino'dom. The rook has other claims to our esteem and affection which are not so generally known : in a domestic state it is no whit be- hind other species in the capacity for strong attachments, in versatility and playfulness, and that tricksy spirit found in most of the corvines, which so curiously resembles, or simulates, the sense of humour in ourselves. I recall here an incident in the life of a tame rook, and by way of apology for introducing it I may mention that this bird, although country bred, was of London too, when his mistress came to town for the season accompanied by her glossy black pet. I will first relate some- thing of his country life, and feel confident that this digression will be pardoned by those of my readers who are admirers of the rook, a bird which we are accustomed to regard as of a more sedate disposition than the jackdaw. He was picked up injured in a park in Oxfordshire, taken in and nursed by the lady of the house until he was well and able to flv 7-t BIRDS IN LONDON about once more ; but he elected to stay with his benefactress, although he always spent a portion of each day in flying about the country in company with his fellows. He had various ways of showing his partiality for his mistress, one of which was ver}' curious. Early every morning he flew into her bedroom by the open window, and alighting en her bed would deposit a small offering on the pillow — a horse-chestnut bur, a little crooked stick, a bleached rabbit bone, a pebble, a bit of rusty iron, which he had picked up and regarded as a suitable present. Whatever it was, it had to be accepted with demonstrations of gratitude and affection. If she took no notice he would lift it up and replace it again, calling attention to it with little subdued exclamations which sounded like words, and if she feigned sleep he would gently pull her liair or tap her cheek with his bill to awake her. Once the present was accepted he would nestle in under her arm and remain so, very contentedly, until she got up. Here we get a delightful little peep into the workings of the rook's mind. We ourselves, our great philosopher tells us, are ' hopelessly ' anthropomorphic. The rook appears to be in as EXPULSION OF THE ROOKS 75 bad a case ; to his mind we are nothing but bigger rooks, *<^ome\vhat misshapen, perhaps, featherless, deprived by some accident of the faculty of flight, and not very well able to take care of ourselves. One summer day the rook came into the daughter's bedroom, where she was washing her hands, and had just taken off* a valuable diamond ring from her finger and placed it on the marble top of the washing-stand. The rook came to the stand and very suddenly picked up the ring and flew out at the open window. The young lady ran down stairs and on to the terrace, calling out that the bird had flown away with her ring. Her mother quickly came out with a field glass in her hand, and together they watched the bird fly straight away across the park to a distance of about a third of a mile, where he dis- appeared from sight among the trees. The ring was gone ! Two hours later the robber returned and flew into the dining-room, where his mistress happened to be ; alighting on the table, he dropped the ring from his beak and began walking round it, viewing it first with one, then the other eye, uttering the while a variety of little complacent notes, in which he seemed to 76 lilUDS IX LONIJON be sayini>- : ' I have often admired this beautiful ring, but never had an opportunity of examining it properly before ; now, after having had it for some time in my possession and shown it to several wild rooks of my acquaintance, I have much satisfaction in restorino- it to its owner, who is my very good friend.' During his sunmier visits to London this rook met with many curious and amusing adventures, as he had the habit of flying in at the open windows of houses in the neighbour- hood of Park Lane, and making himself very much at home. He also flew about Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens every day to visit his fellow-rooks. (Jne day his mistress was walking in the Eow, at an hour when it was full of fashionable people, and the rook, winging his way homewards from the gardens, spied her, and circlino' down ali^'hted on her shoulders, to the amazement of all who witnessed the incident. 'What an astonishing thing!' exclaimed some person in the crowd that gathered round her. 'Oh, not at all,' answered the lady, caressing the bird willi her hand, while he rubbed his beak against her cheek ; ' if you were as fond of the birds as 1 am, and treated them as well, EXPULSION OF THE BOOKS 77 they would l)e glad to come down on to your shoulders, too.''* This happened when the now vanished rooks had their populous rookery in Kensington Gar- dens, where they were to be seen all day flying to and from the old nesting-trees, and stalking over the green turf in search of grubs on the open portions of Hyde Park. And we should have had them there now if they had not been driven out. The two largest London rookeries were those at Greenwich Park and Kensington Gardens. In the first-named the trees were all topped over twenty years ago, with the result that the birds left ; and although the locality has much to attract them, and numbers of rooks constantly visit the park, they have never attempted to build nests since the trees were mutilated. This rookery I never saw ; that of Kensington Gardens I knew very well. Over twenty years ago, on arriving in London, I put up at a City hotel, and on the following day went out to explore, and walked at random, never inquiring my way of any person, and not knowing whether I was going 78 BIBDS IN LONDON east or west. After rambling about for some three or four hours, I came to a vast wooded place where few persons were about. It was a wet, cold morning in early May, after a night of incessant rain ; but when I reached this unknown place the sun shone out and made the air warm and fragrant and the grass and trees sparkle with innumerable raindrops. Never grass and trees in their early spring foliage looked so vividly green, while above the sky was clear and blue as if I had left London leagues behind. As I advanced farther into this wooded space the dull sounds of traffic be- came fainter, while ahead the continuous noise of many cawing rooks grew louder and louder. I was soon under the rookery listening to and watching the birds as they wrangled with one another, and passed in and out among the trees or soared above their tops. How intensely black they looked amidst the fresh brilliant green of the sunlit foliage ! What wonderfully tall trees were these where the rookery was placed ! It was like a wood where the trees were self- planted, and grew close together in charming disorder, reaching a height of about one hundred feet or more. Of the fine sights of London so EXPULSION OF THE BOOKS 79 far known to me, including the turbid, rushing Thames, spanned by its vast stone bridges, the cathedral with its sombre cloud-like dome, and the endless hurrying procession of Cheapside, this impressed me the most. The existence of so noble a transcript of wild nature as this tall wood with its noisy black people, ^o near the heart of the metropolis, surrounded on all sides by miles of brick and mortar and innumerable smoking chimneys, filled me with astonishment ; and I may say that I have seldom looked on a scene that stamped itself on my memory in more vivid and lasting colours. Eecalling the sensa- tions of delight I experienced then, I can now feel nothing but horror at the thought of the unspeakable barbarity the park authorities were guilty of in destroying this nol^le grove. Why was it destroyed ? It was surely worth more to us than many of our possessions — -many painted canvases, statues, and monuments, which have cost millions of the public money I Of brick and stone buildings, plain and ornamental, we have enough to afford shelter to our bodies, and for all other purposes, but trees of one or two centuries' growth, the great trees that give shelter and refreshment to the soul, are not 80 BIRDS IN LONDON many in London. There must, then, have been some urgent reason and necessity for the removal of this temple not builded by man. It could not surely have been for the sake of the paltry sum which the wood was worth — paltry, that is to say, if we compare the amount the timber- merchant would pay for seven hundred elm- trees with the sum of seventy-five thousand pounds the Government gave, a little later, for half a dozen dreary canvases from Blenheim — dust and ashes for the hungry and thirsty ! Those who witnessed the felling of these seven hundred trees, the tallest in London, could but believe that the authorities had good cause for what they did, that they had been advised by experts in forestry ; and it was vaguely thought that the trees, which looked outwardly in so flourishing a condition, were inwardly eaten up with canker, and would eventually (and very soon perhaps) have to come down. If tlie trees had in very truth been dying, the authorities would not have been justified in their action. In the condition in which trees are placed in London it is well nigli impossible that they sliould have perfect health ; but trees take long to die, and during decay are still beautiful. EXPULSION OF THE BOOKS 81 Not far from London is a tree which Aubrey described as v^y old in his day, and which has been dying since the early years of this century, but it is not dead yet, and it may live to be admired by tliou sands of pilgrims down to the end of the twentieth century. In any case, trees are too precious in London to be removed because they are unsound. But the truth was, those in Kensington Gardens were not dying and not decayed. The very fact that they were chosen year after year by the rooks to build upon afforded the strongest evidence that they were the healthiest trees in the gardens. When they were felled a majority of them were found to be perfectly sound. I examined many of the finest boles, seventy and eighty feet long, and could detect no rotten spot in them, nor at the roots. The only reasons I have been able to discover as having been given for the destruction were that grass could not be made to grow so as to form a turf in the deep shade of the grove ; that in wet weather, particularly during the fall of the leaf, the ground was always sloppy and dirty under the trees, so that no person could G 82 BIBDS IN LONDON walk in that part of the grounds without soihng his boots. It will hardly T)e credited that the very men who did the work, before setting about it, respectfully informed the park authorities that they considered it would be a great mistake to cut the trees down, not only because they were sound and beautiful to the eye, but for other reasons. One was that the rooks would be driven away ; another that this tall thick grove was a protection to the gardens, and secured the trees scattered over its northern side from the violence of the winds from the west. They were laughed at for their pains, and told that the ' screen ' was not wanted, as every tree was made safe by its own roots ; and as to the rooks, the}^ would not abandon the gardens where they had bred for generations, but would build new nests on othei- trees. Finally, when it came to the cutting down, the men begged to be allowed to spare a few of the finest trees in the grove; and at last one tree, witli no fewer than fourteen nests on it : tliey were sharj)ly ordered to cut down llic k)t. And cut down they were, with disastrous consecpiences, as we know, as during tlie next few years many scores of llie EXPULSION OF THE BOOKS 83 finest trees on the nortli side of the gardens were blown ddwn by the winds, among them the noblest tree in London — the great beech on the east side of the wide vacant space where the grove had stood. The rooks, too, went away, as they had gone before from Greenwich Park, and as in a period of seventeen years they have not succeeded in establishing a new rookery, we mav now re<>-ard them as lost for ever. Seventeen years ! Some may say that this is going too far back ; that in these fast-moving times, crowded with historically important events, it is hardly worth while in 1898 to recall the fact that in 1880 a grove of seven hundred trees was cut down in Kensino'ton Gardens for no reason whatever, or for a reason which would not be taken seriously by any person in any degree removed from the condition of imbecility ! To the nation at large the destruction of this grove may not have been an important event, but to the millions inhabiting the metropolis, who in a sense form a nation in themselves, it was exceedingly important, immeasurably more so than most of the events recorded each year in the ' Annual Eegister.' It must be borne in mind that to a vast 84 BIBDS IN LONDON majority of this population of five millions London is a permanent liome, their ' province covered with houses ' where they spend their toiling lives far from the sights and sounds of nature ; that the conditions being what they are, an open space is a possession of incalculable ^'akle, to be prized above all others, like an amulet or a thrice-precious gem containing mysterious health-giving properties. He, then, wlio takes from London one of these sacred possessions, or who deprives it of its value by destroying its rural character, by cutting down its old trees and driving out its bird life, inflicts the greatest conceivable injury on the com- munity, and is really a worse enemy than the criminal who singles out an individual here and there for attack, and who for his misdeeds is sent to Dartmoor or to the gallows. We give praise and glory to those who confer lasting benefits on the community ; we love tlieir memories when tliey are no moi-e, and cherish their fame, and liand it on from genera- tion to ^feneration. Li honouring them we honour ourselves. But praise and glory would be witliout significance; and love of our bene- fnctors would lose its best virtue, its ])eculiar EXPULSION OF THE BOOKS 85 sweetness, if such a feeling did not have its bitter op})Osite'*and correlative. In conclusion of this in part mournful chapter I will relate a little experience met with in Kensington Gardens, seventeen years ago. I was in bad health at the time, with no prospect of recover}^ and had been absent from London. It was a brio-ht and beautiful mornin^^ in October, the air summer-like in its warmth, and, thinking how pleasant my favourite green and wooded haunt would look in the sunshine, I paid a visit to Kensington Gardens. Then I first saw the great destruction that had been wrought ; where the grove had stood there was now a vast vacant space, many scores of felled trees lying about, and all the ground trodden and black, and variegated with innumerable yellow chips, which formed in appearance an irregular inlaid pattern. As I stood there idly contemplating the sawn- ofF half of a prostrate trunk, my attention was attracted to a couple of small, ragged, shrill- voiced urchins, dancing round the wood and trying to get bits of bark and splinters off, one with a broken chopper for an implement, the 86 BIRDS IX LONDON other witli a small haiid-liatchet, wliicli flew off the handle at every stroke. Seeing that I was observing theii- antics, one shouted to the other, ' Say, Bill, got a penny ? ' ' No, don't I wish I had ! ' shouted the other. ' Little beggars,' thought I, ' do you really imagine you are going to get a penny out of me ? ' So much amused was I at their trans- parent device that I deliberately winked an eye — not at the urchins, but for the benefit of a carelessly dressed, idle-looking young woman who happened to be standing near just then, regarding us with an expression of slight interest, a slight smile on her rosy lips, the sunshine resting on her beautiful sun-browned face, and tawny bronzed hair. I must explain that I had met her before, often and often, in London and other towns, and in the country, and by the sea, and on distant seas, and in many uninhabited places, so that we were old friends and quite familiar. Present!}' an exceedingly wasted, miserable- lot )kiiig,decnq)id old wom.'in cameby,b(Mit almost (l()iil)le und(M- a ragged shnwl full of sticks and brushwood which slic had gatlicred where the men were now eiigngcd in loj)ping offtho branches EXPULSION OF THE BOOKS 87 of a tree tliey had just felled. ' My ! she's got a load, ain't sli«, l^ill ? ' cried the first urchin again. ' Oh, if we had a penny, now ! ' I asked him wliat he meant, and very readily and volubly he ex})lained that on payment of a penny the workmen would allow any person to take away as much of the waste wood as he could carry, but without the penny not a chip. T relented at that and gave them a penny, and with a whoop of joy at their success they ran off to where the men Avere working. Then I turned to leave the gardens, nodding a good-bye to the young woman, who was still standing there. The shght smile and expression of slight interest, that curious baffling expres- sion with which she regards all our actions, from the smallest to the greatest, came back to her lips and face. But as she returned my glance with her sunny eyes, beliind the sunniness on the surface there was a look of deep meaning, such as I have occasionally seen in them before. It seemed to be saying sorrowful and yet comfortino- thino\s to me, tellino^ me not to oxieve overmuch at these hackings and mutilations of the sweet places of the earth — at these losses to be made good. It was as if she had shown me a 88 BIBDS IN LONDON vision of some far time, after this London, after the dust of all her people, from park ranger to bowed-down withered old woman gathering rotten rain-sodden sticks for fuel, had been blown about by the winds of many centuries — a vision of old trees growing again on this desecrated spot as in past ages, oak and elm, and beech and chestnut, the ha})py, green homes of squirrel and Ijird and bee. It was very sweet to see London beautified and made healthy at last ! And I thought, quoting Hafiz, that after a thousand years my bones would be filled Avitli gladness, and, uprising, dance in the sepulchre. 89 CHAPTER VI RECENT COLONISTS The wood-pigeon in Kensington Gardens — Its increase — Its beauty and charm— Perching on Shakespeare's statue in Leicester Square — Change of habits — The moorhen — Its ap- pearance and habits — An aesthetic bird — Its increase — The dabchick in London— Its increase — Appearance and habits — At CHssold Park — The stock-dove in London. Of the species wliicli have estabhshed colonies in London during recent years, the wood-pigeon, or ringdove, is the most important, being the largest in size and the most numerous ; and it is also remarkable on account of its beauty, melody, and tameness. Indeed, the presence of this bird and its abundance is a compensation for some of our losses suffered in recent years. It has for many of us, albeit in a less degree than the carrion crow, somewhat of glamour, pro- ducing in such a place as Kensington Gardens an illusion of wild nature ; and watching it suddenly spring aloft, with loud flap of wings, to soar circling on high and descend in a graceful 90 BIBDS IX LOXDOX curve to its tree again, and listening to the beautiful sound of its human-like plaint, which may l)e heard not only in summer but on any mild day in winter, one is apt to lose sight of the increasingly artificial aspect of things; to forget the havoc that has been wrought, until the surviving trees — the decayed giants about whose roots the cruel, hungry, glittering axe ever flits and plays like a hawk-moth in the summer twilight — no longer seem conscious of their doom. Twentv years ago the wood-pio'eon was almost unknown in London, the very few birds that existed being confined to woods on the borders of the metropolis and to some of the old private parks — Eavenscourt, Brondesbury, Clissold and Ih'ockwell Parks ; except two or three pairs that bred in the group of fir trees on the north side of Kensington Gardens, and one pair in St. James's Park. Tree-felling caused these l)irds to abandon the parks sometime during the seventies. But from 1883, when a single pair nested in Jhickingham Palace Gar- dens, wood-pigeons have increased and spread from year to year until tlie present time, when there is not any park with large old trees, or BECENT COLONISTS 91 with trees of a moderate size, where these birds are not annual breeders. As the park trees no longer afford them sufficient accommodation they have gone to other smaller areas, and to many squares and gardens, private and public. Thus, in Solio Square no fewer than six pairs had nests last summer. It was very pleasant, a friend told me, to look out of his window on an April morning and see two milk-white eggs, bright as gems in the sunlight, lying in the frail nest in a plane tree not many yards away. In North London these birds have increased greatly during the last three years. Sixteen pairs bred successfully in 1897 in Clissold Park, which is small, and there were scores of nests in the neigh- bourhood, on trees growing in private grounds. Even in the heart of the smoky, roai'ing City they build their nests and rear their young on any large tree. To other spaces, where there are no suitable trees, they are daily visitors ; and lately I have been amused to see them come in small flocks to the coal deposits of the Great Western Eailway at Westbourne Park. What attraction this busy black place, vexed with rumbling, puffing, and shrieking noises, can have for them I cannot guess. These doves, wdien 92 BIBDS IN LONDON disturbed, invariably fly to a terrace of houses close by and percli on the chimney-pots, a newly acquired habit. In Leicester Square 1 have seen as many as a dozen to twenty birds at a time, leisurely moving about on the asphalted walks in search of crumbs of bread. It is not unusual to see one bird perched in a pretty attitude on the head of Shakespeare's statue in the middle of the square, the most com- manding position. I never admired that marble until I saw it thus occupied by the pretty dove- coloured quest, with white collar, iridescent neck, and orange bill ; since then I have thought highly of it, and am grateful to Baron Albert Grant for his gift to London, and recall with pleasure that on the occasion of its unveiling I heard its praise, as a work of art, recited in rhyme by Browning's — Hop-o-my-thumb, there, Banjo-Byron on his strum-strum, there. I heartily wish that the birds would make use in the same way of many other statues with w^hich our public places are furnished, if not adorned. So numei'ous aie the wood-pigeons at the WOOD-PIGEON ON SHAKESPEAKE S STATUE BE CENT COLONISTS 93 end of summer in tlieir favourite parks that it is easy for any person, by throwing a few handfuls of strain, to attract as many as twenty or thirty of them to his feet. Their tameness is wonderful, and they are delightful to look at, although so stout of figure. Considering their enormous appetites, their portliness seems only natural. But a full habit does not detract from tlieir beauty ; they remind us of some of our dearest lady friends, who in spite of their two score or more summers, and largeness where the maiden is slim, have somehow retained loveliness and grace. We have seen that the London wood- pigeon, like the London crow, occasionally alights on buildings. One bird comes to a ledge of a house-front opposite my window, and walks up and down there. We may expect that other changes in the birds' habits will come about in time, if the present rate of increase should continue. Thus, last summer, one pair built a nest on St. Martin's Church, Trafalgar Square ; another pair on a mansion in Victoria Street, Westminster. Something further will be said of this species in a chapter on the movements of birds in London. 94 BIBDS IN LONDON Next to the ringdove in importance — and a bird of a more fascinating personality, if sucli a word be admissible — is the moorhen, pretty and quaint in its silky olive-brown and slaty- grey dress, with oblique white bar on its side, and white under tail, yellow and scarlet beak and frontal shield, and large green legs. Green- legged little hen is its scientific name. Its motions, too, are pretty and quaint. Not without a smile can we see it going about on the smooth turf with an air of dignity incongruous in so small a bird, lifting up and setting down its feet with all the deliberation of a crane or bustard. A hundred curious facts have been recorded of this familiar species — the ' moat-hen ' of old troubled days when the fighting man, instead of the schoolmaster as now, was abroad in England, and manor-houses were surrounded by moats, in which the moorhen lived, close to human l)eings, in a semi-domestic state. But after all tliat has been written, we no sooner have him near us, under our eyes, as in London to-day, than we note some new trait or pretty trick. Tims, in a pond in West r.ondoii 1 saw a moorlicii ncl in a manner wliich, S(^ Tar ns 1 know, had nevei* been described ; and 1 must confess that if some BECENT COLONISTS 95 friend had related such a thing to me I should have been disposed to think that his sight had deceived him. This moorhen was quietly feeding on the margin, but became greatly excited on the appearance, a little distance away, of a second bird. Lowering its head, it made a little rush at, or towards, the new comer, then stopped and went quietly back ; then made a second little charge, and again walked back. Finally it began to walk backwards, with slow, measured steps, towards the other bird, displaying, as it advanced, or retrograded, its open white tail, at the same time glancing over its shoulder as if to observe the effect on its neighbour of this new mode of motion. Whether this demonstration meant anger, or love, or mere fun, I cannot say. Instances of what Euskin has called the moorhen's ' human domesticity of temper, with curious fineness of sa,gacity and sympathies in taste,' have been given by Bishop Stanley in his book on birds. He relates that the young, when able to fly, sometimes assist in rearing the later broods, and even help the old birds to make new nests. Of the bird's aesthetic taste he has the following anecdote. A pair of very tame moorhens that lived in the grounds of a 96 BIBDS IN LONDON clero^ymau, in Gheadle, Staffordshire, in con- stantly adding to the materials of their nest and decorating it, made real havoc in the garden ; the hen was once seen sittino^ on her eo-cTs ' snrrounded with a brilliant wreath of scarlet anemones.' An instance eqnally re- markable occurred in 1896 in Battersea Park. A pair of moorhens took it into their fantastic little heads to l:)uild their nest against a piece of wire-netting stretched across the lake at one point. It was an enormous structure, built up from the water to the top of the netting, nearly three feet high, and presented a strange appearance from the shore. On a close view the superintendent found that four tail- feathers of the peacock had l3een woven into its fabric, and so arranged that the foui- l)road tips stood free alcove the nest, shading the cavity and sitting bird, like four great gorgeously coloured leaves. The moorhen, like the ringdove, was almost unknown in London twenty years ago, and is now as widely diffused, but owing to its stru(^- ture and haljits it cannot keep pace with the other bird's increase. It must have water, and some rushes, or weeds, or bushes to make its RECENT COLONISTS 97 nest in ; and wherever these are fonnd, however small the pond may be, there the moorhen will live very contentedly. A very few years ago ic would have been a wild thing to say that the little grebe was a suitable bird for London, and if some wise ornithologist had prophesied its advent how we should all have laughed at him ! For how should this timid feeble-winged wanderer be able to come and go, finding its way to and from its chosen park, in this large province covered with houses, by night, through the network of treacherous telegraph wires, in a lurid atmo- sphere, frightened by strange noises and con- fused by the glare of innumerable lamps ? Of birds that get their living from the water, it would have seemed safer to look for the coming (as colonists) of the common sandpiper, king- fisher, coot, widgeon, teal : all these, also the heron and cormorant, are occasional visitors to inner London, and it is to be hoped that some of them will in time become permanent addi- tions to the wild bird life of the metropolis. The little grebe, before it formed a settlement, was also an occasional visitor during its spring II 98 BIBDS IN LONDON and autumn travels ; and in 1870, when tliere was a visitation on a large scale, as many as one hundred little fjrebes were seen at one time on the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. But it was not until long afterwards, about fifteen years ago, that the first pair had the boldness to stay and breed in one of the park lakes, in sight of many people coming and going every day and all day long. This was at St. James's Park, and from this centre tlie bird has extended his range from year to year to other parks and spaces, and is now as well established as the ringdove and moorhen. But, unlike the others, he is a summer visitor, coming in March and April, and going, no man knows whither, in October and November. If he were to remain, a long severe frost might prove fatal to the whole colony. He lives on little fishes and water insects, and must have open water to fish in. He is not a showy bird, nor large, benig less than the teal in size, and indeed is known to comparatively few persons. Nevertheless he is a welcome addition to oiii- wild bird life, and is, to those who know hiiii, a wonderfully interestinji little creatures clothed in a dense BECEXT COLONISTS 99 unwettable pliinia- on in the old-established colonies, we find RECENT COLONISTS 103 good reason for the hope that other species, previously unknown to the metropohs, will be added from time to time. We know that birds attract birds, both their own and other kinds. Even now there may be some new-comers — pioneers and founders of fresh colonies — whose presence is unsuspected, (^r known only to a very few observers. I have been informed by Mr. Howard Saunders that he has seen the stock-dove in one of the West-end parks, and that a friend of his had independently made the discovery that this species is now a visitor to, and possibly a resident in, London. One would imagine the stock-dove to be a species well suited to thrive with us, as it would find numberless breeding-holes both in the decayed trees in the parks and in big buildings, in which to rear its young in safety. I should prefer to see the turtle-dove, a much prettier and more graceful bird, with a better voice, but beggars must not be choosers ; with the stock-dove established, London will possess three of the four doves indigenous in these islands, and the turtle-dove — at present an annual breeder in woods quite near to London — may follow by- and-by to complete the quartette. 104 BIBDS IN LONDON CHAPTEE YII London's little birds Number ot species, common and uncommon — The London sparrow — His predominance, hardiness, and intelKgence — A pet sparrow — Breeding irregularities — A love-sick bird — Sparrow shindies : their probable cause — ' Sparrow chapels ' — Evening in the parks — The starling — His independence — Characteristics — Blackbird, thrush, and robin — AVliite black- birds— The robin — Decrease in London — Habits and dis- position. There are not more than about twenty species of small passerine birds that live all the year in London proper. The larger wild birds that breed in London within the five-mile radius are eight species, or if we add the semi-domestic pigeon or rock-dove, there are nine. Of the twenty small birds, it is surprising to find that only five can Ije described as really common, including tlie robin, wliich in recent years has ceased to be abundant in the interior parks, and lias quite disappeared from the squares, burial grounds, and other small open spaces. The five famiUar species are the sparrow, starling, black- LONDON'S LITTLE BIBDS 105 bird, song-tlirusli or throstle, and robin, and in the present chapter these only will be dealt with. All the other resident species found in London proper, or inner I^ondon — missel-thrush, wren, hedge-sparrow, nuthatch, tree-creeper, tits of five species, chaffinch, bullfinch, greenfinch, and yellowhammer, also the summer visitants, and some rare residents occasionally to be found breeding on the outskirts of the metropolis — will be spoken of in subsequent chapters descriptive of the parks and open spaces. Here once more the sparrow takes pre- cedence. ' What ! the sparrow again ! ' the reader may exclaim ; ' I thought we had quite finished with that little bird, and were now going on to something else.' Unfortunately, as we have seen, there is little else to go on to until we get to the suburbs, and that little bird the sparrow is not easily finished with. Besides, common as he is, intimately known to every man, woman, and child in the metropolis, even to the meanest gutter child in the poorest districts, it is always possible to find something fresh to say of a bird of so versatile a mind, so highly developed, so predominant. He must indeed be gifted with remarkable qualities to 106 BIBDS IN LONDON have risen to sucli a position, to have occupied, nay conquered, London, and made its human inhabitants food-providers to his nation ; and, fniall}', to have kept his possession so long without any decay of his pristine vigour, despite the unhealthy conditions. He does not receive, nor does he need, that fresh blood from the country which we poor human creatures must have, or else perish in the course of a very few generations. Nor does he require change of air. It is commonly said that ' town sparrows ' migrate to the fields in summer, to feast on corn ' in the milk,' and this is true of our birds in the outlying suburbs, who live in sight of the fields ; farther in, the sparrow never leaves his London home. I know that my sparrows — a few dozen that breed and live under my eyes — never see the country, nor any park, square, or other open space. The luirdiness and adaptiveness of the l)ir(l must both be great to enable it to keep its health and streuLith tli rough tlie gloom and dai'kness of London winters. There is no doubt thai many of oui* caged birds would perish at ihis season if tliey did not feed by gas or candle light. When thev do not so feed it is found LONDON'S LITTLE BIIWS 107 that the niortaUty, presumably from starvation, is very considerable. During December and January the London night is nearly seventeen hours in length, as it is sooner dark and later light than in the country ; while in cold and foggy weather the birds feed little or not at all. They keep in their roosting-holes, and yet they do not appear to suffer. After a spell of frosty and very dark weather I have counted the sparrows I am accustomed to observe, and found none missing. But the sparrow's chief advantage over other species doubtless lies in his greater intelligence. That ineradicable suspicion with which he regards the entire human race, and which one is sometimes inclined to set down to sheer stupidity, is, in the circumstances he exists in, his best policy. He has good cause to doubt the friendli- ness of his human neighbours, and his principle is, not to run risks ; when in doubt, keep away. Thus, when the roads are swept the sparrows will go to the dirt and rubbish heaps, and search in them for food ; then they will fly up to any window-sill and eat the bread they find put there for them. But let them see any rubbish of any description there, anything but bread — a 108 BIBDS IN LONDON bit of string, a chip of wood, a scrap of paper, white or blue or yellow, or a rag, or even a penny piece, and at the first sight of it away they will dart, and not return until the dangerous object has been removed. A pigeon or starling would come and take the food without paying an}^ attention to the strange object which so startled the sparrow. They are less cunning. Without doubt there are many boys and men in all parts of London who amuse themselves by trying to take sparrows, and the result of their attempts is that the birds decline to trust anyone. In this extreme suspiciousness, and in their habits generally, all sparrows appear pretty much alike to us. When we come to know them intimatel}^ in the domestic state, we find that there is as much individual character in sparrows as in other highly intelligent creatures. The most interesting tame sparrow I have known in London was the pet of a lady of my acquaint- ance. This l)ird, however, was not a cockney sparrow from the nest : he was hatched on the other side of the Channel, and his owner rescued him, when young and scarce able to fly, from some street urchins in a suburl) of Varis, wlio were playing with and tormenting him. Tn liis LONDON'S LITTLE BIRDS 109 London home he grew up to be a handsome bird, brighter in plumage than our cock sparrows usually seem, even in the West-end parks. He was strongly attached to his mistress, and liked to play with and to be caressed by her ; when she sat at work he would perch con- tentedly by her side by the half-hour chirruping his sparrow- music, interspersed with a few notes borrowed from caged songsters. He displayed a marked interest in her dress and ornaments, and appeared to take pleasure in richly coloured silks and satins, and in gold and precious stones. But all these things did not please him in the same degree, and the sight of some ornaments actually angered him : he would scold and peck at the brooch or necklace, or whatever it was, which he did not like, and if no notice was taken at first, he would work himself into a violent rage, and the offensive jewel would have to be taken off and put out of sight. He also had his likes and dislikes among the inmates and guests in the house. He would allow me to sit by him for an hour, taking no notice, but if I made any advance he would ruffle up his plumage, and tell me in his unmistakable sparrow-language to keep my distance. Once 110 BIRDS IN LONDON lie took a sudden violent hatred to his owner's maid ; no sooner would she enter the room where the sparrow happened to he than he would dart at her face and peck and beat her with his wings ; and as he could not be made to like, nor even to tolerate her, she had to be discharged. It was, however, rare for him to abuse his position of first favourite so grossly as on this occasion. He was on tlie whole a good- tempered bird, and had a happy life, spending the winter months each year in Italy, where his mistress had a country house, and returning in the spring to London. Then, very unexpectedly, his Ions life of eioliteen years came to an end ; for up to the time of dying he showed no sign of decadence. To the last his plumage and dis- position were bright, and his affection for his mistress and love for his own music un- abated. After all, it must be said that the sparrow, as a pet, has his limitations ; he is not, mentally, as high as the crow, aptly described by Mac- fxillivray as the ' great sub-rational chief of the kingdom of birds.' And however luxurious the home we may give him, he is undoubtedly happier living his own independent life, a LONDON'S LITTLE BIBDS 111 married ])ir(l, making slovenly straw nests under the tiles, and seekin^^ his food in the j^^utter. Many years ago Dr. Gordon Stables said, in an article on the sparrow, that he felt convinced from his own observation of these birds that curious irregularities in their domestic or matrimonial relations were of very frequent occurrence, a fact which the ornithologists had overlooked. Last summer I had proof that such irregularities do occur, but I very much doubt that they are so common as he appears to believe. I had one pair of sparrows breeding in a hole under the eaves at the top of the house, quite close to a turret window, from which I look down upon and observe the birds, and on the sill of which I place bread for them. This pair reared brood after brood, from April to No- vember, and so long as they found bread on the window-sill they appeared to feed their young almost exclusively on it, although it is not their natural food ; but there was no green place near where caterpillars might be found, and I dare say the young sparrow has an adaptive stomach. At all events broods of four and five were successively brought out and taught to feed on 112 BIRDS IN LONDON the window-sill. After a few days' liolida}^ the old birds would begin to tidy up the nest to receive a fresh clutch of eggs. In July I noticed that a second female, the wife, as it appeared, of a neighbouring bird, had joined the first pair, and shared in the tasks of incubation and of feeding the young. The cast-off cock-sparrow had followed her to her new home, and was constantly hanging about the nest trying to coax his wife to go back to him. Day after day, and all day long, he would be there, and sitting on the slates quite close to the nest he would begin his chirrup — chirrup — chirrup ; and gradually as time went on, and there was no response, he would grow more and more excited, and throw his head from side to side, and rock his body until he would be lying first on one side, then the other, and after a while he would make a few little hops forward, trailing his wings and tail on the slates, then cast himself down once more. Something in his monotonous song with its not unmusical rhythm, and his extravagant love-sick imploring gestures and movements, reminded me irresistibly of Chevalier in the character of Mr. 'Enry 'Awkins — his whole action on tlie stage, the thin pi[)iug cockney K* ■ *' ■**«s?;;?^. i&'^Jis-i, LOVE-SICK COCK SPARROW LONDON'S LITTLE BIRDS 113 voice, the trivial catcliiiig melody, and, I had almost added, the very words — So 'elp me bob, I'm crazy ! Lizer, you're a daisy ! Won't yer share my 'umble 'ome ? Oh, Lizer ! sweet Lizer ! And so on, and on, until one of the birds in the nest would come out and furiously chase him away. Then he would sit on some chimney- pipe twenty or thirty yards off, silent and solitary ; but by-and-by, seeing the coast clear, he would return and begin his passionate pleading once more. This went on until the young birds were brought out, after which they all went away for a few days, and then the original pair returned. Xo doubt 'Enry 'Awkins had got his undutiful doner back. The individual sparrow is, however, little known to us : we regard him rather as a species, or race, and he interests the mass of people chiefly in his social character when he is seen in companies, and crowds, and multitudes. He is noisiest and attracts most attention when there is what may be called a ' shindy ' in the sparrow 1 lU BIBDS IX LOXDOX cominunity. Shindies are of frequent occurrence all the year round, and may arise from a variety of causes ; my belief is that, as they connuonly take place at or near some favourite nesting or roosting site, they result from the sparrow's sense of proprietorship and his too rough resentment of any intrusion into his own domain. Sparrows in London mostly remain paired all the year, and durino^ the winter mouths roost in the breeding-hole, often in company with the young of the last-raised brood. Why all the neighbours rush in to take part in the fight is not so easy to guess : possibl}^ they come in as would-be peace- makers, or policemen, but ai-e themselves so wildly excited that they do nothing except to ofet into each other's wav and increase the confusion. Of more interest are those daily gatherings of a pacific nature at some favourite meeting- place, known to Londoners as a ' sparrows* chapel.' A large tree, or group of trees, in some garden, square, or other space, is used by the birds, and here they are accustomed to confJ-re^J'ate at various limes, when the rain is over, or when a burst of sunshine after gloomy weather makes them glad, and at sunset, 'i'lieir LONDON'S LITTLE BIBBS 115 chorus of ringing chirruping sounds has an exceedingly pleasant effect ; for although com- pared with the warblers' singing it may be a somewhat rude music, by contrast with the noise of trafTu* and raucous cries from human throats it is very bright and glad and even beautiful, voicing a wild, happy life. It is interesting and curious to find that this habit of concert-singing at sunset, although not universal, is common among passerine birds in all regions of the globe. And when a bird has this habit he will not omit his vesper song, even when the sun is not visible and when rahi is falling. In some mysterious way he knows that the great globe is sinking beneath tlie horizon. Day is over, he can feed no more until to-morrow, in a few minutes he will be sleeping among the clustering leaves, but he must sing his last song, must join in that last outburst of melody to express his overflowing joy in life. This is a habit of our sparrow, and even on the darkest days, when days are shortest, any person desirous of hearing the birds need only consult the almanac to find out the exact time of sunset, then repair to a ' chapel,' and he will not be disappointed. I 2 116 BIBDS IX LONDON In some of the parks, notably at Battersea, where the birds are in thousands, the effect of so many voices all chirruping together is quite wonderful, and very delightful. The time will come, let us hope, when foi- half a dozen species of small birds in London we shall have two dozen, or even fifty ; until then the sparrow, even the common gutter-sparrow, is a bird to be thankful for. The starling ranks second to the sparrow in numbers ; but albeit second, the interval is very aresit.: the starlincrs' thousands are but a small tribe compared to the sparrows' numerous nation. It has been said that the starling is almost as closely associated with man as the sparrow. That is hardly the case ; in big towns the spar- row, like the rat and black beetle, although not in so unpleasant a way, is parasitical on man, whereas the starling is perfectly independent. He frequents Iniman habitations l)ecause they ])i-n\-id(' liiiii with snilable breeding-holes; he builds iu a house, or barn, or ('iHU'ch tower, just as lie does in a lioh' in a tree in a. wild forest, nr a 1h)1<* in ihc rock on some sea-cHff, LONDON'S LITTLE BIBDH 117 where instead of men and women lie has puffins, guillemots, and gannets for neighbours. The roar of the sea or the jarring noises of human traffic and industry — it is all one to the starling. That is why he is a London bird. In the breeding season he is to be found diffused over the entire metropolis, an astonishing fact when we consider that he does not, like the sparrow, find his food in the roads, back gardens, and small spaces near his nest, but, like the rook, must go a considerable distance for it. Two seasons ago (1896) one pair of starlings had their nest close to my house — a treeless district, most desolate. When the young were hatched I watched the old birds going and coming, and on leaving the nest they invariably flew at a good height above the chimney-pots and telegraph wires, in the direction of the Victoria Gate of Hyde Park. They returned the same way. It is fully two miles to the park in that direction. The average number of eggs in a starling's nest is six; and assuming that these birds had four or five young, we can imagine what an enormous labour it must have been to supply them with suitable insect food, each little beakful of grubs involving a return 118 BIRDS IN LONDON journey of at least four miles ; and the gruhs would certainly be very much more difficult to find on the trodden sward of Hyde Park than in a country meadow. I pitied these brave birds ever}^ day, when I watched them from my turret window, going and coming, and at the same time I rejoiced to think that this pair, and hundreds of other pairs with nests just as far from their scanty feeding-grounds, were yet able to rear their young each season in London. For the starling is really a splendid bird as birds are with us in this distant northern land — splendid in his spangled glossy dress of metallic purple, green, and bronze, a singer it is always pleasant to listen to, a flyer in armies and crowds whose aerial evolutions in autumn and winter, before settling to roost each evening, have long been the wonder and admiration of mankind. He inhabits London all the year round, but not in the same numbers : in the next chapter more will be said on this point. He also sings throughout tlie year; on any autumn oi- winter day a small company or flock of a dozen or two of birds may be found in any park containing large trees, and it is a delight that never grows stale to listen to the musical LONDOX'S TATTLE BIBBS 119 conversation, or coiicert of curiously contrasted sounds, perpetually going on among tlieni. The airv whistle, the various chirp, the clink-clink LONDON STARLINGS as of a cracked bell, the low chatter of mixed harsh and musical sounds, the kissing and finger-cracking, and those long metallic notes, as of a saw being filed not unmusically, or (as a friend suggests) as of milking a cow in a tin pail ; — however familiar you may be with the 120 BIBDS IN LONDON starling, you cannot listen to one of their choirs without hearing some new sound. There is more variety in the starling than in any other species, and not only in his language ; if you ob- serve him closely for a short time, he will treat you to a sudden and surprising transformation. Watch him when absorbed in his own music, especially when emitting his favourite saw-filing or milking- a-cow-in-a-tin-pail sounds : he trembles on his perch — shivers as with cold — his feathers puffed out, his wings hanging as if broken, his beak wide open, and the long pointed feathers of his swollen throat projected like a ragged beard. He is then a most forlorn-looking object, apparently broken up and falling to pieces ; suddenly the sounds cease, and in the twinkling of an eye he is once more transformed into the neat, compact, glossy, alert starling ! Something further may be said aljout the pair of starlings that elected to breed the summer before last in sight of my top windows, in that brick desert where my liome is. When they brought out and led tlieiv young away, T wondered if they wovdd evei- return to such a spot. Surely, thought I. ihey will have some recollection of the vast labour of rearing a LONDON'S LITTLE BIRDS 121 nestful of young at sucli a distance from their feeding-ground, and when summer comes once more will be tempted to settle somewhere nearer to the park. The Albert Memorial, for instance, gorgeous with gold and bright colour, might attract them ; certainly there was room for them, shice it had in the summer of 1896 but one pair of starlings for tenants. It was consequently something of a surprise when, on March 23 last spring, early in the morning, the birds reappeared at the same place, and spent over an hour in fluttering about and exploring the old breeding- hole, perching on the slates and chimney-pots, and clinging to the brick wall, fluttering their wings, screaming and whistling as if almost beside themselves with joy to be at home once more. Brave and faithful starlings ! we hardly de- serve to have you back, since London has not been too kind to her feathered children. Quite lately she has driven out her rooks, who were faithful too ; and long ago she got rid of her ravens ; and to her soaring kites she meted out still worse treatment, pulling down their last nest in 1777 from the trees in Gray's Inn Gardens, and cutting open the young birds to find out, in the interests 122 BIIWS IN LONDON of orint1iol(\f?ical science, what they had eaten ! Between the starhnc::^ and the next m order, the blackbird, there is again a very great difference with regard to numbers. The former counts thousands, the Latter hundreds. Be- tween l:)lackbird and song-thrush, or throstle, there is not a wide difference, l)ut if we take the whole of London, the l)lackbird is much more numerous. After these two, at a consider- able distance, comes the robin. In suburban rounds and orardens these three common species are equally abundant. But in these same private places, which ring the metropolis round with innumeral)le small green refuges, or sanctuaries, several other species which are dying out in the parks and open spaces of inner London are also common — wren, hedge-sparrow, blue, cole, and great tits, chaffinch, and green- finch— and of these no more need be said in this chapter. As we have seen, there is always a great interest shown (by the collector especially) in that not very rare phenomenon, an abnor- mally white bird. But in London the bird- LONDON'S LITTLE BIRDS 123 killers are restrained, and the white specimen is sometimes able to keep his life for a few or even for several months. Eecently (1897) a very beautiful white blackbird was to be seen in Kensington Gardens, in the Flower Walk, east of the Albert Memorial. He was the successor to a wholly milk-white blackbird that lived during the summer of 189-j in the shrub- beries of Kensington Palace, and was killed by some scoundrel, who no doubt hoped to sell its carcass to some bird-stulFer. Its crushed body was found by one of the keepers in a thick holly-bush close to the public path ; the slayer had not had time to sret into the enclosure to secure his prize. The other bird had some black and deep brown spots on his mantle, and a few inky black tail and wing feathers — a beautiful Dominican dress. But when I first saw him, rushing out of a black holly-bush, one grey misty morning in October, his exceeding whiteness startled me, and I was ready to believe that I had beheld a blackbird's ghost, when the bird, startled too, emitted his prolonged chuckle, proving him to be no supernatural thing, but only a fascinat- ing freak of nature. He lived on, very much 124 BIRDS IX LONDON admired, until the end of March last year (1897), having meanwhile found a mate, and was then killed by a cat. The robin, although common as ever in all the more rural parts of London — the suljurban districts where there are gardens with shrul:)S and trees — is now growing sadly scarce every- where in the interior of tlie metropolis. In 1865 the late Shirley Hibberd wrote that this bird was very common in London : ' Eobins are seen among the hay-carts at Whitechapel, Smithfield, and Cumberland Markets, in all the squares, in Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, and other gardens, in the open roadway of Farring- don Street, Ludgate Hill, the Strand, and Blackfriars Eoad ; nay, I once saw a robin on a lovely autumn afternoon perch upon the edge of a gravestone in St. Paul's Churchyard and trill out a carol as sweetly as in any rural nook at home.' Now the robin has long vanished from all these public places, even from the squares that are green, and that he is becoming very scarce in all the interior parks I shall have occasion to show in later chapters. It is a great pity that LONDON'S LITTLE BIRDS 125 this vshould be so, as this bright little bird is a universal favourite on account of his confidence in and faniiliarit}^ with man, and his rare beauty, and because, as becomes a cousin of the nightin- gale, he is a very sweet singer. Moreover, just as his red breast shines brightest in autumn and winter, when all things look grey and desolate, or white with the snow's universal whiteness, so does his song have a peculiar charm and almost unearthly sweetness in the silent songless season. It is not strange that in credulous times man's imagination should have endowed so loved a bird with impossible virtues, that it should have been believed that he alone — heaven's little feathered darling — cared for ' the friendless bodies of unburied men ' and covered them with leaves, and was not without some supernatural faculties. Nor can it be said that all these pretty fables have quite faded out of the rustic mind. But, superstition apart, the robin is still a first favourite and dear to everyone, and some would gladly think he is a better bird, in the sense of being gentler, sweeter-tempered, more affectionate and human., than other feathered creatures. But it is not so, the tender expression of his large dark eye is deceptive. The late Mr. 126 BIBDS IN LONDON Tristram- Valentine, writing of the starling in London, its neat, bright, glossy appearance, com- pared with that of the soot- blackened disreput- able-looking sparrow, says ' the starling always looks like a gentleman.' In like manner the robin will always be a robin, and act like one, in London or out of it — the most unsocial, fierce-tempered little duellist in the feathered world. Now I wish to point out that this fierce intolerant spirit of our bird is an ad- vantage in London, if we love robins and are anxious to have plenty of them. It is a famiUar fact that at the end of summer the adult robins disappear ; that they remain in hiding in the shade of the evergreens and thick bushes until they have got a new dress, and have recovered their old vigour ; that when they return to the world, so to speak, and find their young in possession of their home and territory, they set themselves to re- conquer it. For the robin will not tolerate another robin in that portion of a garden, shrubbery, orchard, or plantation which he regards as his very own. A great deal of fighting then takes place between old and young hh-ds, and these lights in many instances end LONDON'S LITTLE BIBBS 127 fatally to one of the combatants. The raven has the same savage disposition and habit with regard to its young ; and when a young raven, in disposition a ' chip of the old block,' refuses to go when ordered, and fights to stay, it occasionally happens that one of the birds gets killed. But the raven has a tremendous weapon, a stone axe, in his massive beak ; how much greater the fury and bulldog tenacity of the robin must be to kill one of his own kind with so feeble a weapon as his small soft bill ! At the end of the summer of 1896 two robins were observed fightino; all dav lono- in the private gardens of Kensington Palace, the fight ending in the death of one of the birds. Finally, as a result of all the chasing and fighting that goes on, the young birds are driven out to find homes for themselves. In London, in the interior parks, not many young rol^ins are reared, but many of those that have been reared in the suburban districts drift into London, and altogether a considerable number of Ijirds roam about the metropolis in search of some suitable green spot to settle in ; and I will only add here, in anticipation of what will be said in a later chapter, that if suitable 128 BIRDS IN LONDON places were provided for them, the robins would increase year by year from this natural cause. There are other movements of robins in London which it will be more in order to notice in the next chapter. 129 CHAPTER YlII MOVEMENTS OF LONDOX BIRDS Migration as seen in London — Swallows in the parks— Field- fares— A flock of wild geese — Autumn movements of resident species — ^AYood-pigeons — A curious habit— Dabchicks and moorhens— Crows and rooks— The Palace daws — Starlings — Robins— A Tower robin and the Tower sparrows— Passage birds in the parks— Small birds wintering in London — Influx of birds during severe frosts — Occasional visitors — The black-lieaded gull — A winter scene in St. James's Park. The seasonal movements of the strict migrants are little noticed in London ; tliere are few such species that visit, fewer still that remain any time with us. And when they come we scarcely see them : they are not like the residents, reacted on and modified by their surroundings, made tame, ready to feed from our hands, to thrust themselves at all times upon our attention. Nevertheless we do occasionally see something of these shyer wilder ones, the strangers and passengers ; and in London, as in the rural districts, it is the autumnal not the vernal 130 BIBDS IX LONDON migration wliicli impresses the mind. Birds are seldom seen arriving in spring. Walking to-day in some park or garden, we hear the first willow- wren's delicate tender warble among the fresh April foliage. It was not heard yesterday, bnt the small modest-colonred singer may have been there nevertheless, hidden and silent among the evergreens. The birds that appear in the autumn are plainly travellers that have come from some distant place, and have A^et far to go. Wheatears may be seen if looked for in August on Hampstead Heath, and occasionally a few other large open spaces in or near London. Tn September and October swallows and martins put in an appearance, and although they refuse to make their summer home in inner London, they often come in considerable immbers and remain for many days, even for weeks, in the parks in autumn. It has been conjectured that the paucity of winged insect hfe in London is the cause of tlie departure of swallows and house-martins as breeding species. Yet in the autumn of 1896, from September to the middle of October, hundreds of these bii'ds lived in tlie central and many other parks in hondon, and doubtless they .MOVEMENTS OF LONDON BIRDS 131 found ci .sLifFicieiicy of food in spite of tlie cold east winds which prevailed at that time. M^ FIELDFARES AT THE TOWEK Among the winter visitors to the ontskirts of the metropohs, the fieldfare is the most 132 BIRDS IN LONDON abundant as well as the most attractive. During the winters of 189o-() and 1896-7 I saw them on numberless occasions at Wimbledon, Eich- mond, Hampstead Heath, Bostall Woods, Hack- ney Marsh, Wanstead, Dulwich, Brockwell Park, Streatham, and other open spaces and woods round London. In the gardens of the outer suburbs there is always a great profusion of winter berries, and the felts seen in these places are probably regular visitors. Certainly they are tamer than fieldfares are apt to be in the country, but they seldom penetrate far into the brick-and-mortar wilderness. I have seen a few in Kensington Gardens, and in November, 189G, a few fieldfares alighted on a tree at the Tower of London. Stranger still, in February 1897 a flock of wild geese was observed flying over the Tower : the birds went down the river flying low, as it was noticed that when they passed over the Tower Bridge they were not higher than the pinnacles of the two big towers. The birds that are strange to London eyes are very nearly all seen in the autumn, from September to November. At this mutable season a person who elects to spend his nights on the roof, with rugs and an umbrella to keep out MOVEMENTS OF LONDON BIRDS 133 cold and wet, may be rewarded by hearing far- off shrill delicate noises of straggling sandpipers or other shore birds on passage, or the mysterious cry of the lapwing, ' wailing his way from cloud to cloud.' All these rare sights and sounds are for the very patient watchers and listeners ; neverthe- less they are the only ' authentic tidings " the Londoner receives of that great and wonderful wave of life which travels southward over half the globe in advance of winter. This annual exodus and sublime flight to distant delectable regions beyond the sea is, however, only taken part in by some of the feathered people ; mean- while the others that remain to brave the cold and scarcity are also seen to be infected with a restless spirit and desire of change. The starling, missel-thrush, larks and pipits, and other kinds, alter their way of life, uniting in flocks and becoming wanderers over the face of the country. Finches, too, go a-gypsying : the more sedentary species leave their breeding-haunts for suitable winter quarters ; and everywhere there is a great movement, a changing of places, packing and scattering, a hurrying to and fro all over the land. 134 BIBDS IN LONDON The London birds are no exception, although their autumnal movements have hitherto at- tracted little attention. These movements are becoming more noticeable, owing to changes going on in the character of the metropolitan bird population. The sparrow, as we have seen, does not leave home, but recently there has been a great increase in the more vagrant species, the starling and wood-pigeon especially. During the last few years the wood-pigeon has been grow- ing somewhat more domestic, and less inclined to leave town than formerly, but from time to time the old wandering instinct reasserts itself, and it was observed that during the autumn of 1896 a majority of the birds left London. At Lincoln's Inn Fields there were thirteen birds down to the end of September, then all but one disappeared. This solitary stayer-at-home had been sprung upon and injured by a cat some time before the day of departure. Last year, 1897, the autumnal exodus was even greater. Thus, on October 25 I walked the whole length of the three central parks, and saw no pigeons except one pair of young birds not long out of the nest, in Hyde Park, and one parent bird feeding them. The other parent MOVEMENTS OF LONDON lilBDS 13") had probably gone awa}' to tlie country, leaving his mate to rear this very late brood as best she could. Doubtless many of these wanderers from the metropolis get killed in the country, Ijut in December and January the survivors return to the safety of the parks, and to a monotonous diet of stale bread. It is probable that with the change of tem- perature in September and October the London wood-pigeons, like so many birds, are seized by a restless and roving spirit ; but I am inclined to believe that the taste of wild nuts and fruits, which they get in the parks at that season, is one cause of their going away. They do not get much of this natural food ; they first strip the oaks of their acorns almost before they are quite ripe, depriving the London urchins of their little harvest, and then attack the haws and holly-berries ; and when this small supply has been exhausted the birds go further afield in search of more. On the evening of August 26, 1897, I saw a number of wood-pigeons feeding on the haws in a manner quite new in my experience. There were twelve or fourteen birds on a good-sized thorn-tree oTowinof in Buckinofham Palace 136 BIBDS IN LONDON \V(JOD-J'I(iEON FEEDING ON HAWS grounds; but the berries on this tree grew at the tips of long sleiulor ])rnnches and conhl not have been reached ]j\ ihc birds in tlie ordinary MOVEMENTS OF LONDON BIRDS 137 way. The pigeons would settle on a branch and then begin moving cautiously towards the points, the branch bending beneath the weight more and more until the Ijird, unable to keep any longer on the branch, would suddenly turn over and re- main hanging head down, suspended by its cling- ing feet. In this position, by stretching its neck it would be able to reach the berries, which it would then leisurely devour. As many as four or five birds were seen at one time hanging in this way, appearing with wings half-open like dead or wounded birds tied by their feet to the branch- lets, from which they were suspended. Since witnessing this curious scene I have been told by Mr. Coppin, the superintendent at Battersea Park, that he has seen the wood-pigeons at that place acting in the same way. It is probably a habit of the birds which has hitherto escaped notice. The dabchicks leave London in the autumn and return in spring : they ma}^ be looked for in the ornamental waters as early as the third week in March. The moorhens formerly dis- appeared from London in winter ; they are now residents throughout the year in a few of the 138 BIBDS IX LONDON parks where there is shelter, and during seyere frosts they feed at the same table with the ornamental waterfowl. From all the smaller lakes which they have recently colonised they vanish in cold weather. In autumn they wander about a good deal by night ; any small piece of water will attract them, and their cries .will be heard during the dark hours ; before it is light they will be gone. Crows and rooks are most often seen in London during the winter months. Many rooks have their winter roosting-place in Eichmond Park, and small bands of these birds visit the central parks and other open spaces. On the morning of February 3, 1897, about fifty rooks visited Kensington Gardens and fed for some hours on the strip, of grassed land adjoining the palace. The whole jackdaw colony, numbering twenty-four birds, fed with them, and when, about twelve o'clock, the visitors rose up and flew away, the daws, after seeing them off, returned in a body to the tree-tops near the palace, and for the rest of the day continued iu an excited state. From time to time they would rush up with a loud clamour, then return to the tree-tops, where they would sit close together MOVEMENTS OF LONDON BIBDS 139 and silent as if expecting something, and at intervals of a minute or two a simultaneous cry would burst from them. I have observed that on winter evenings tliese daws fly away from the gardens in a north- westerly direction : where their winter roosting- place is I have not discovered. The starling is the most interesting London bird in his autumn movements. Tt is only at the end of July, when they are gathered in large bodies, that some idea can be formed of their numbers. Flocks of a dozen to forty or fifty birds may be seen in any park and green space any day throughout the winter ; these are the birds that winter with us, and are but a small remnant of the entire number that breed in London. At the end of June the starlings begin to con- gregate every evening at their favourite roosting- places. Of these there are several, the most favoured being the islands in the ornamental water at Eegent's Park, the island in the Serpentine, and at Buckingham Palace grounds and Battersea Park. The last is the most im- portant. Before sunset the birds are seen pouring in, flock after flock, from all quarters, until the trees on the island are black 140 BIBBS IX LONBON with their thousands, and the noise of their singing and chattering is so great that a person standing on the edge of the lake can hardly hear himself speak. These meeting places are evidently growing in favour, and if the autumn of 1898 shows as great an increase as those of 1896 and 1897 over previous years, London will have as compensation for its lost rookeries some very fine clouds of starlinsfs. At the beoinnino' of October most of the birds go away to spend the winter in the country, or possibly abroad. In February and March they begin to reappear in small flocks, and gradually scatter over the whole area of the metropolis, each pair going back to its old nesting-hole. The annual scattering of robins at the end of summer, when, after the moult, the old birds attack and drive away the young, has been described in the last chapter. This habit of the bird alone would cause a good deal of moving about of the London robins each year, but it is also a very general belief of ornithologists that at this season there is a large migratory move- ment of young robins throughout the country. At all events, it is a fact tliat in August and September i-obins go about in London a good MOVEMENTS OF LONDON BIBDS 141 deal, and frequently appear in the most unlikely places. Some of these are no doubt birds of the year hatched in London or the suburbs, and others may be migrating robins passing throuo^h. At the Tower of London robins occasionally appear in autumn, but soon go away. The last one that came settled down and was a great favourite with the people there for about two months, being very friendly, coming to window- sills for crumbs, and singing every day very beautifully. Then one day he was seen in the Greneral's garden wildly dashing about, hotly pursued by seven or eight sparrows, and as he was never seen again it was conjectured that the sparrows had succeeded in killing him. The robin is a high-spirited creature, braver than most birds, and a fair fighter, but against such a gang of feathered murderous ruffians, bent on his destruction, he would stand no chance. The Tower sparrows, it may be added, appear to be about the worst specimens of their class in London. They are always at war with the pigeons and starlings, and would gladly drive them out if they could. It is a common W2 BIRDS IN LONDON tliinii' for some foreign bird to escape from its cage on l^oard ship and to take refuge in the trees and gardens of the Tower, but woe to the escaped captive and stranger in a strange land who seeks safety in such a place ! Immediately on his arrival the sparrows are all up against him, not to ' heave half a Ijrick at him,' since they are not made that way, but to hunt him from place to place until they have driven him, weak with fatigue and terror, into a corner where they can finish him with their l)ludgeon beaks. This violence towards strangers of the Tower sparrow is not to be wondered at, since this unpleasant disposition or habit is common to manv species. The prophet Jeremiah had observed it when he said, ' Mhie heritage is unto me as a speckled l)ird, the birds round about are against her.' To the Tower spar- rows every feathered stranger is conspicuously speckled, and they are against lier. Th(^ wonder is that tliey should keep u}) tlieir [)erpetual little teasing warfare against tlie pigeons and starlings, their neighbours from time innuemorial. One would have imagined that so intelligent and practical a ])ird as the s])arro\v, :\\'\rv vainly trying MOVEMENTS OF LONDON BIRDS 143 for several centuries to drive out his fellow tenants, would liave made peace wdtli them and found some more profitable outlet for his superabundant energies. Possibl}' the introduction of a few feathered policemen — owls, or magpies, or sparrow hawks — would have the effect of making him a less quarrelsome neighbour. In autumn and in spring a variety of summer visitants, mostly warblers, pass through London, delaying a little in its green spaces. In Sep- tember we are hardly cognisant of these small strangers within our gates, all but one or two being silent at that season. In April and May, in many of the parks, we may hear the chiff- chaff, willow-wren, blackcap, sedge-warbler, the whitethroat, occasionally the cuckoo, and a few other rarer species, but they sing little, and soon leave us to seek better breeding- sites than the inner parks offer. While some of our birds, as we have seen, forsake us at the approach of cold weather, some for a short period, others to remain away until the following spring, a small contrary movement of birds into London is going on. These winterers with us come not in battalions 144 BIBDS IN LONDON and are little remarked. They are to be found, a few here and a few there, all over London, wherever there are trees and bushes, l^ut less in the public parks than in private grounds, cemeteries, and other quiet spots. Thus, during the last two exceptionally mild winters a few skylarks have lived contentedly in the com- paratively small green area at Lambeth Palace. Nunhead Cemetery is a favourite winter resort of a number of small birds — starlings, chaf- finches, and greenfinches, and a few of other species. Chaffinches are found in winter in several of the open spaces where they do not breed, and among other species to be found wintering in the quiet green spots in small numbers are linnets, goldfinches, pipits, and the pied wagtail. In exceptionally severe winters birds come into London in considerable numbers — rooks, starlings, larks, blackbirds and thrushes, finches, and other small species — and they then visit not only the parks Ijut all the squares and private gardens. During the big frost of 1890-1 skylarks were seen every day searching for food on the Thames Embankment. These strangers all vanish from London on tlic break- up of tlie frost. MOVE 2IE NTS OF LONDON BIBDS 145 During the late autumn and Avinter months a few large birds occasionally appear — heron, mallard, widgeon, teal, &c. As a rule the}' come and go during the dark hours. The sight of water and the cries of the ornamental water- fowl attract them. They are mostly irregular visitors, and cannot very well be included in the list of London birds. The case of the black-headed gull is different, as this species may now be classed with the regular visitors, and not merely to the outlying spaces, like the fieldfare, but to the central parks of the metropolis, where, like the wood- pigeon, he looks to man for food. The black-headed gull has always been a winter visitor in small numbers to the lower reaches of the Thames, coming up the ri^er as far as London Bridge. In severe winters more birds come ; thus, in the winter of 1887-8 they appeared in great numbers, and ranged as high up as Putney. The late Mr. Tristram-Valentine, in describing this visitation, wrote: 'It is seldom, indeed, that these birds appeared in such numbers in the Thames above London Bridge as they have done lately, and their appearance has, from its rarity, caused a corresponding L 146 BIBDS IN LONDON excitement among Londoners, as is proved by the numbers of people that have crowded the bridges and embankments to watch their move- ments. To a considerable portion of these, no doubt, the marvellous flight and power of wing of the gull came as an absolute revelation.' Gulls came up the river in still greater force during the exceptionally long and severe frost of 1892-3. That was a memorable season in the history of the London gulls. Then, for the last time, gulls were shot on the river between the bridges, and this pastime put a stop to by the police magistrates, who fined the sportsmen for the offence of discharo-infr firearms to the public danger. And then for the first time, so far as I know, the custom of regularly feeding the gulls in London had its beginning. Every day for a period of three to four weeks hundreds of working men and boys would take advantage of the free hour at dinner time to visit the bridges and embankments, and give the scraps left from their meal to the birds. The sight of this midday crowd hurrying down to tlie waterside with welcome in their faces and fc^od in their hands must have come 'as an absolute revelation ' to the irulls. MOVEMENTS OE LONDON BIBDS 147 During the memorable frost of 18D4— 1 the birds again appeared in immense numbers, and would doubtless have soon left us, or else perished of cold and hunger on the snow-covered hummocks of ice which filled the Thames and gave it so arctic an aspect, but for the quantities of food cast to them every day. As in previous years when gulls have visited the Thames in considerable numbers, many of the birds found their way into the parks, and were especially numerous in St. James's Park, where they formed the habit of feeding with the ornamental water-fowl. We have shice experienced three exception- ally mild winters, so that the gulls were not driven by want to invade us ; but they have come to us nevertheless, not having forgotten the gene- rous hospitality London extended to them in the frost. St. James's Park has now become the favourite wintering place of a considerable number of birds, and their habit is to sj^end the day on the lake, feeding on the broken bread and scraps of meat thrown to them from the bridge, and leaving about sunset to spend the night on the river. In the autumn of 1896, three or four days after the gulls began to 148 BIBDS IN LONDON appear on the Thames, a body of two or three hundred of these birds settled down in the park water, and fed there every day and all day long until the following spring — March 1897. A favourite pastime of mine during the winter months was to feed these park gulls with sprats, which were plentiful and could be bought anywhere for one penny a pound, or in quantities for about a farthing the pound. Gulls cannot live by bread alone ; it is true that even in London they do not, like the blubber-eating Greenlander, spew it out of their mouths, for they will eat almost anything, but it is not partaken of Avith zest, and even with a crop-full they do not feel that they have dined. However much bread they had had, no sooner would they see the silvery gleam of a little tossed-up sprat than there would be a universal scream of excitement, a rush from all sides, and the whole white vociferous crowd would be gathered before me, almost brushing my face with their wings, sweeping round and ruuiid, joyfully feasting on the little fishes, cast to them in showers, to be deftly cauglit before tliey touched the water. Sr)me of the bij'ds, 1 x )l(lei- or more intelligent FEEDING THE GULLS IN ST. JAMES's PARK MOVEMENTS OF LONDON BIRDS 149 than their fellows, would actually take the sprats from the hand. A very few days before writing this chapter end, on January 30, 1898, I passed by the water and saw the gulls there, where indeed they have spent most of the daylight hours since the first week in October. It was a rough wild morning ; the hurrying masses of dark cloud cast a gloom below that was like twilight ; and though there was no mist the trees and buildings surrounding the park appeared vague and distant. The water, too, looked strange in its intense blackness, which was not hidden by the silver-grey light on the surface, for the sur- face was everywhere rent and broken by the wind, showing the blackness beneath. Some of the gulls — about 150 I thought — were on the water together in a close flock, tailing off to a point, all with their red beaks pointing one way to the gale. Seeing them thus, sitting high as their manner is, tossed up and down with the tumbling water, yet every bird keeping his place in the company, their whiteness and buoyancy in that dark setting was quite wonderful. It was a picture of black winter and beautiful wild bird life which would have had a rare attraction 150 BIRDS IX LOXDOX even in the desert places of the earth ; in London it could not be witnessed without feel- ings of surprise and gratitude. We see in this punctual return of the gulls, bringing their young with them, that a new habit has been acquired, a tradition formed, which has given to London a new and exceed- ingly beautiful ornament, of more value than many works of art. 151 CHAPTEE IX A SURVEY OF THE PAKKS : WEST LONDOX A general survey of the metropolitan parks — West London — Central parks, with Holland Park— A bird's highway — Decrease of songsters— The thrush in Kensington Gardens— Suggestions — Owls in Kensington Gardens — Other "West London open spaces — Piavenscourt Park as it was and as it is. Our 'province' of London is happily not entirely ' covered with houses,' and in each of its six large districts — West, Xorth-west, Xortli, East, South- east, and South-west — there are many hundreds of acres of green and tree-shaded spaces where the Londoner may find a moderate degree of refresh- ment. Unfortunately for large masses of the population, these spaces are very unequally distributed, being mostly situated on or close to the borderland, where town and country meet ; consequently they are of less value to the dwellers in the central and densely peopled districts than to the inhabitants of the suburbs, who have pure air and ample healthy room without these public grounds. 152 BIBDS IN LONDON Before going the round of tlie parks, to note in detail their present condition and possibihties, chiefly with reference to their wild bird life, it would be well to take a rapid survey of the metropolitan open spaces generally. To enable tlie reader the more closely to follow me in the survey, I have introduced a map of the County of London on a small scale, in which the whole of the thickly built-over portion appears un- coloured ; the surrounding country coloured green ; the open spaces, including cemeteries, deep green ; the small spaces — squares, graves, churchyards, gardens, recreation grounds, &c., as dark dots ; the suburban districts, not densely populated, where houses have gardens and grounds, pale green. Now the white space is not really birdless, being everywhere inhabited by sparrows, and in parts by numerous and populous colonies of semi-wild pigeons, while a few birds of other species make their homes in London gardens. Shirley Hibbert, writing of London birds in I8G0, says : ' London is, indeed, far richer in birds than it deserves to l)e.' He also says : 'A few birds, however, appear to be specially adapted not merely for London as viewed from SUIiVEY OF THE PABKS : WEST LONDON 153 without, but for London par excellence^ that is to say for the noisy, almost treeless City ; with "^s^ RAVENSCOURT PARK these for pioneers , nature invades the Stock Exchansfe, the Court of Aldermen, the Bank, and all the railway termini, as if to say. Shut us out if you can' But ' with the exception of these few pecuharly urban species we may take it that the London 154 BIIWS IN LONDON birds uet their food, breed, and live most of the time in the open spaces where there are trees and bushes. Even the starHng, which breeds in buildin^i^s, must go to the parks to feed. It must also be borne in mind that birds that penetrate into London from the surrounding country — those that, like the carrion crow, live on the borders and fly into or across London every day, migrants in spring and autunni, young birds reared outside of London going about in search of a place to settle in, and wanderers generally — all fly to and alight on the green spaces only. These spaces form their (tamping grounds. As there is annually a very considerable hiflux of feathered strangers, we can see by a study of the map how much easier to penetrate and more attractive some portions of the metropolis are than others. It would simplify tlie matter still further if we were to look upon London as an inland sea, an archi- pelago, al)Out flfty miles in circumference, con- taining a few very large islands, several of a smaller size, and numerous very small ones — a sea or lake with no well-defined shore-line, but mostly witli wide borders which might be described as mixed land and water, with pro- SURVEY OF THE PARKS : WEST LONDON 155 montories or tongues of land here and there running into it. These promontories, also the chains of islands, form, in some cases, broad green thoroughfares along which the birds come ; the sinuous band of the Thames also forms to some extent a thoroughfare. I believe it is a fact that in those parts of the suburbs that are well timbered, and where the houses have gardens and grounds, the bird population is actually greater (with fewer species) than in the country proper, even in places where birds are very abundant. In parts of Norwood, Sydenham, and Streatham, and the neighbourhoods of Dulwich, Greenwich, Lee, Highgate, and Hampstead, birds are extremely abundant. Going a little further afield, on one side of the metropolis we have Epping Forest, and on the opposite side of the metropolis several vast and well- wooded spaces abounding in bird life — Kew Gardens, the Queen's private grounds, Old Deer Park, S}on and Eichmond parks, Wimbledon, &c. From all these districts there is doubtless a considerable overflow of birds each season on to the adjacent country, and into London, and some of the large parks are well placed to attract these wanderers. 156 BIBDS IN LONDON In going into a more detailed account of the parks, it is not my intention to furnish anything like a formal or guide-book description, assigning a space to each, but, taking them as they come, singly, in groups and chains, to touch or dwell only on those points that chiefly concern us — their characters, comparative advantages, and their needs, with regard to bird life. Beginning with the central parks and other parks situated in the West district, we will then pass to the North-west and North districts, and so on until the circle of the metropolis has been completed. The central parks, Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, Green Park, and St. James's Park, contain respectively 274, 360, 55, and 60 acres — in round numbers 750 acres. Add to this Holland Park, the enclosed meadow-like grounds adjoining Kensington Palace, Hyde Park Gardens, St. George's burial-ground, and Buckingham Palace Gardens, and we get altogether a total of about nine hundred to one thousand acres of almost continuous green country, extending from Hiuh Street, Kensington, to Westminster. Tliis very large area (for to the eyes of the flying bird it must appear as one) is favourably situated SURVEY OF THE PABKS : WEST LONDON 157 to attract and support a very considerable amount of Ijird life. At its eastern extremity we see that it is close to the river, along which birds are apt to travel ; while three miles and a half away, at its other end, it is again near the Thames, where the river makes a great bend near Hammersmith, and not very distant from the more or less green country about Acton. There is no doubt that a majority of the summer visitants and wanderers generally that appear in the central parks come through Holland Park, as they are usually first observed in the shrubberies and trees at Kensington Palace. Holland Park, owing to its privacy and fine old trees, is a favourite resort of wild birds, and is indeed a better sanctuary than any public park in London. From the palace shrubberies the new-comers creep in along the Flower Walk, the Serpentine, and finally by way of the Green Park to St. James's Park. But they do not stay to breed, the place not being suitable for such a purpose. It is possible that a few find nesting-places in Buckingham Palace Gardens, and that others drift into Battersea Park. Another proof that these parks — so sadly mis- managed from the bird-lover's point of view — 158 BIBDS IN LONDON are situated advantageously may be found in the fact that three of the species which have estabhshed colonies in London within the last few years (wood-pigeon, moorhen, anddabchick) lirst formed settlements here, and from this centre have spread over the entire metropolis, and now inhabit every park and open space where the conditions are suited to their require- ments. These three needed no encouragement : the summer visitors do certainly need it, and at Battersea, and in some other parks less than one fourth the size of Hyde Park, they find it, and are occasionally al)le to rear their young. Even the old residents, the sedentary species once common in the (central parks, lind it hard to maintain their existence ; they have died or are dying out. The missel-thrush, nuthatch, tree- creeper, oxeye, spotted woodpecker, and others vanished several years ago. The chailhich was reduced to a single pair within the last few years ; this pair lingered on for a year or a little over, then vanished. Last spring, 1897, a few chaffinches returned, and their welcome song was heard in Kensington Gardens until June. Xot a greenlinch is to l)e seen, the commonest and most prohlic garden bird in I^'ngland, SURVEY OF THE PARKS : WEST LONDON 159 so abundant that scores, nay hundreds, may be bought any Sunday morning in the autumn at the bird-dealers' shops in the slums of London, at about two pence per bird, or even less. The wrens a few years ago were reduced to a single pair, and had their nesting- place near the Albert Memorial ; of the pair I believe one bird now remains. Two, perhaps three, pairs of hedge-sparrows inhabited Ken- sington Gardens during the summers of 1896 and 1897, but 1 do not think they succeeded in rearing any young. Xor did the one pair in St. James's Park hatch any eggs. In 1897 a pair of spotted flycatchers bred in Kensington Gardens, and were the only representatives of the summer visitors of the passerine order in all the central parks. The robin has been declining for several years ; a decade ago its sudden little outburst of bright melody was a common autumn and winter sound in some parts of the park, and in nearly all parts of Kensington Gardens. This delightful sound became less and less each season, and unless something is done will before many years cease altogether. The blue and cole tits are also now a miserable renmant, 160 BIRDS IN LONDON and are restricted to the gardens, where they may be seen, four or five together, on the high elms or chnging to the pendent twigs of the birches. The blackbird and song- thrush have also fallen very low ; I do not believe that there are more than two dozen of these common l)irds in all this area of seven hundred and fifty acres. A larger number could be found in one corner of Finsbury Park. Finsbury and Battersea could each send a dozen or two of sonosters as o a gift to the royal West-end parks, and not miss their music. Of all these vanishing species the thrush is most to be regretted, on account of its beautiful, varied, and powerful voice, for in so noisy an atmosphere as that of London loudness is a very great merit ; also because (in London) this bird sings very nearly all the year round. Even at the present time how much these few remaining birds are to us ! From one to two decades a<2fo it Avas possible on any calm mild day in winter to listen to half a dozen thrushes sincjino' at various points in the gardens ; now it is ^'ery rare to hear more than one, and daring the exceedingly mild winter of 1890-7 1 never heard more than two. Even these few birds SURVEY OF THE PARKS : WEST LONDON 161 make a wonderful difference. There is a miraculous quality in tlieir voice. In the best of many poems which the Poet Laureate has addressed to this, his favourite l^ird, he sings : Hearing thee first, ^Yh() pines or grieves For vernal smiles and showers ! Thy voice is greener tha,n the leaves, And fresher than the flowers. Even here in mid-London the ejQTect is the same, and a strange glory fills the old ruined and deserted place. But, alas ! 'tis but an illusion, and is quickly gone. The tendency for many years past has been towards a greater artifi- cialit}'. It saves trouble and makes for pretti- ness to cut down decaying trees. To take measures to prevent their fall, to drape them with ivy and make them beautiful in decay, would require some thought and care. It is not so long ago that Matthew Arnold com- posed his 'Lines written in Kensington Gardens.' It seems but the other day that, he died; but how impossible it would be for anyone to-day, at this spot, to experience the feeling which inspired those matchless verses ! M 162 BIBDS IN LONDON In this lone, open glade I lie, Screened by deep boughs on either hand ; And at its end, to stay the eye, Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand ! Birds here make song, each bird has his, Across the girdling city's hum. How green under the boughs it is ! How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come'! Sometimes a child will cross the glade To take his nurse his broken toy ; Sometimes a thrush flit overhead Deep in her unknown day's employ. Here at my feet what wonders pass. What endless, active life is here ! What blowing daisies, fragrant grass ! An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear. In the huge world, which roars hard by. Be others happy if they can ! But in my helpless cradle I Was breathed on by the rural Pan. Calm soul of all things ! Make it mine To feel amid the city's jar, That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and cannot mar. SURVEY OF THE PAEKS : WEST LOXEOX 163 The will to neither strive nor cry, The power to feel w^th others give ! Calm, calm me more ! nor let me die Before I have begmi to live. In these vast gardens and parks, with large trees, shrubberies, wide green spaces, and lakes, there should be ample room for many scores of the delightful songsters that are now vanishing or have already vanished. And much might be done, at a very small cost, to restore these species, and to add others. One of the first and most important steps to be taken in order to make the central parks a suitable home for wild birds, especially of the songsters, both resident and migratory, that nest on or near the ground, is the exclusion of the army of cats that hunt every night and all night long in them. This subject will be dis- cussed more fully in another chapter. Proper breeding - places are also greatly wanted — close shrubberies and rockeries such as we find at Battersea and Finsbury Parks. The existing shrubberies give no proper shelter. In planting them the bird's need of privacy was not considered ; the space allowed to them is too small, the species of plants that birds M 2 164 BIRDS IN LONDON prefer to roost and nest in are too few. It would make a wonderful diilerence if in place of so many unsuitable exotic shrubs (especially of the ugly, dreary-looking rhododendron) we had more of the always pleasing yew and holly ; also furze and bramble ; with other native plants to be found in any country hedge, massed together in that charming disorder which men as well as birds prefer, although the gardeners do not know it. There are several spots in Kensington Gardens where masses of evergreens would look well and would form welcome refuges to scores of shy songsters. The more or less open ground north of the Flower Walk forms a deep well- sheltered hollow, where it would be easy to create a small pond with rushes and osiers growing in it, which would be very attractive to the birds. It would be easy to make a spot hi every park in Ijondon where the sedge-warbler could breed. Another very much needed improvement is an island in the Serpentine, which would serve to attract wild l)irds. The Serpenthie is by a good deal the largest of the artificial lakes of inner London, yet with the exception of a couple of moorhens, and in winter a stray gull oi* two SUBVEY OF THE PABKS : WEST LONDON 165 seen flying over the water, it has no wild bird hfe, simply because there is no spot where a wild bird can breed. The existing small island, close to the north bank and the sub-rangers' village, is used by some of the ducks to breed in. Somethino^ mi^ht be done to make this island more attractive to birds. With one, perhaps two, exceptions, the com- paratively large birds in the central parks have been so fully written about hi former chapters that nothing more need be said of them in this place. It remains only to speak of the owls in Kensington Gardens. It is certainly curious to iind that in these gardens, where, as we have seen, birds are not encouraged, two such species as the jackdaw and owl are still resident, although long vanished from all their other old haunts in London. Of so important a bird as the owl I should have preferred to write at some length in one of the earlier chapters, but there was very little to say, owing to its rarity and secrecy. Xor could it be included in the chapters on recent colonists, since it is probable that it has always been an inhabitant of Kensington Gardens, although its existence there has not been noticed by those 166 BIIWS IN LONDON who have written on the wild bird Ufe of London. It is unfortunate that we have no enjoyment of our owls : they hide from sight in the old hollow trees, and when they occasionally exercise their voices at night we are not there to hear them. Still, it is a pleasure to know that they are there, and probably always have been there. It is certain that during the past year both the brown and white owl have been living in the gardens, as the night-watchers hear the widely different vocal performances of both birds, and have also seen both species. Probably there are not more than two birds of each kind. Owls have the habit of dri\'ing away their young, and the stray white owls occasionally seen or lieard in various parts of London may be young birds driven from the gardens. Some time ago the cries of a white owl were heard on several nights at Lambeth Palace, and it was thought that the bird had made its home in the tower of Lambeth Church, close by. In the autumn of 1890 a solitary white owl frequented the trees at Buckhurst Hill. An ornithological friend told me that he had seen an owl, probably the same bird, one evening flying over the Serpentine ; and on inquiring of some of the })ark people, I was SUBVEY OF THE PARKS: WEST LONDON 167 told that tliey knew notliing about an owl, but that a cockatoo had mysteriously appeared every evening at dusk on one of the trees near the under-ranger's lodge ! After a few weeks it was seen no more. I fancy that this owl had been expelled from the gardens by its parents. Directly in line with the central and Holland parks, about a mile and a quarter west of Hol- land Park, we have Eavenscourt Park — the last link of a broken chain. To the birds that come and go it occupies the position of a half-way house between the central parks and the country proper. Unhappily West Kensington, which lies between Holland and Eavenscourt Parks, is now quite covered with houses — a brand-new yet depressing wilderness of red brick, without squares, gardens, boulevards, or breathing spaces of any description whatsoever. Away on the rio'ht hand and on the left a few small oreen spaces are found — on one hand Shepherd's Bush Green, and on the other Brook Green, St. Paul's Schools ornamental grounds, and Hammersmith Cemetery and Cricket Ground. But from West Kensington it is far for children's feet to a spot of o-reen turf. 168 BIBDS IX LONDON Havenscourt. though not large (32 acres), is very beaiitifuL With Waterlow, Chssold, and Brockwcll Parks it shares the distinciion of being a real park, centuries old ; and despite the new features, the gravelled paths, garden-beds, iron railirigs, &c., which had to be intro- duced when it was opened to the pul)lic, it retains much of its original park-like character. Its venerable elms, hornbeams, beeches, cedars, and hawthorns are a very noble possession. To my mind this indeed is the most beautiful park in London, or perhaps I should say that it would be the most beautiful if the buildings round it were not so near and conspicuous. It may be that I am somewhat prejudiced in its favour. I knew it when it was private, and the old image is very vivid to memory ; I lived for a long time beside it in sad days, when the constant sight of such a green and shady wilder- ness from my window was a great consolation. It was beautiful even in the cold, dark winter months when it was a waste of snow, and when, despite the bitter weather, the missel-thrush poured oat its loud trinmphaiit notes from the top of a tall elm. In its s])ring and suunnca- aspect it had a wild grace and ireshness, which SUBVEY OF THE PAEKS : WEST LONDON 1G9 made it unlike any othei" spot known to me in or near London. The old manor house in- side the park was seldom occupied ; no human figure was visible in the grounds ; there were no paths, and all things grew untended. The grass was everywhere long, and in spring lit with colour of myriads of wild flowers ; from dawn to dusk its shady places were full of the melody of birds ; exquisitely beautiful in its dewy and flowery desolation, it was like a home of immemorial peace, the one remnant of unadulterated nature in the metropolis. The alterations that had to be made in this park when the County Council took it over produced in me an unpleasant shock ; and the birds were also seriously affected by the change. When the gates were thrown open, in 1888, and a noisy torrent of humanity poured in and spread itself over their sweet sanctuary, they fled in alarm, and for a time the park was almost birdless. The carrion crows, strange to say, stuck to their nesting-tree, and by-and-1)}' some of the deserters began to return, to be followed by others, and now there is as mucii bird life as in the old days. It is probable, however, that some of the summer visitors have 170 BIRDS IX LONDON ceased to breed. At present we have the crow, wood -pigeon, missel-thrush, chaifnich, wren, hedge-sparrow, and in the summer the pied wagtail and spotted flycatcher and willow- wren. CORMOKANTS AT ST. JAMES S PARK 171 CHAPTEK X NORTH-WEST AND NORTH LONDON Open spaces on the border of West London — The Scrubs, Old Oak Common, and Kensal Green Cemetery — North-west district — Paddington Kecreation Ground, Kilburn Park, and adjoining open spaces — Regent's Park described — At- tractive to birds, but not safe — Hampstead Heath : its character and bird Hfe — The ponds — A pair of moorhens — x\n improvement suggested — North London districts — High- gate Woods, Churchyard Bottom Wood, Waterlow Park, and Highgate Cemetery — Finsbury Park — A paradise of thrushes — Clissold Park and Abney Park Cemetery. Before proceeding to give a brief account of the parks and open spaces of North-west and North London it is necessary to mention here a group of open spaces just within the West district, on its northern border, a mile and a half to two miles north of Eavenscourt Park. These are Wormwood Scrubs, Little Wormwood Scrubs, Old Oak Common, and Kensal Green Cemetery. As they contain altogether not far short of three hundred acres, and are in close proximity, they might in time have been thrown into one park. A large open space will be 172 BIRDS IN LONDON sadly needed in that part of London before many years are passed, and it is certain that West London cannot ao on buryinjj: its dead much longer at Kensal Green. But it is to be feared that the usual short-sighted policy will prevail with regard to these spaces, and a good deal of the space known as Old Oak Common has already been enclosed with barbed-wire fences, and it is now said that the commoners' rights in this space have been extinguished. Beyond these spaces are Acton and Harlesden — a district where town and country mix. From Wormwood Scrubs to Eegent's Park it IS three miles as the crow flies — three miles of houses inhabited by a working-class population, with no green spot except the Paddington Recreation Ground, which is small (2-) acres), and of little or no use to the thousands of poor children in this vast parish, being too far from their homes. Crossing the line dividing the West from the Xoi-th-west district near Kensal Green, we find th(^ following four not large open s])aces in Ivilburn — Kensal Pise, Ih-ondesbury Park (])ii- vate), Paddington Cemetery, and Kilburn or Queen's Park (oO acres). XOUTH-WEST AXD XOBTH LONDON 173 All this part of London is now being rapidly covered with houses, and the one beautiful open space, with large old trees in it, is Brondesbury Park. How sad to think that this fine park will probably be built over within the next few years, and that the only public open space left will be the Queen's l^irk — a dreary patch of stiff clay, where the vegetation is stunted and looks tired of life. Even a few exceptionally dirty-looking sparrows that inhabit it appear to lind it a depressing place. Two miles east of this melancholy spot is Regent's Park, which now forms one continuous open space, under one direction, with Primrose Hill, and contains altogether 473 acres. It is far and away the largest of the inner London parks, its area exceeding that of Hyde Park by 112 acres. Its laro'e extent is but one of its advantao-es. Although not all free to the public, it is all open to the birds, and the existence of several more or less private enclosed areas is all in their favour. On' its south, east, and west sides this space has the brick wilderness of London, an endless forest of chimneys defiling the air with their smoke ; but on the north side it touches a district where gardens abound, and trees. 174 BIBDS IX LONDON shrubs, and luxuriant ivy and creepers give it a country-like aspect. This pleasant green character is maintained until Hampstead Heath and the country proper is reached, and over this rural stretch of North-west London the birds come and go freely between the country and Regent's Park. This large space should be exceedingly attractive to all such birds as are not intolerant of a clay soil. There are exten- sive green spaces, a good deal of wood, and numerous large shrubberies, which are more suitable for birds to find shelter and breed in than the shrubberies in the central parks. There is also a large piece of ornamental water, with islands, and, better still, the Regent's Canal running for a distance of nearly one mile through the park. The steeply sloping banks on one side, clothed with rank grass and shrubs and crowned with large unmutilated trees, give this water the appearance of a river in the country, and it is, indeed, along the canal where birds are always most abundant, and where the finest melody may be heard. All these advantages should make Regent's Park as rich in varied bird life as any open space in the metropolis. Unfortunately the birds are not NOBTH-WEST AND NORTH LONDON 175 encouraged, and if tliis park was not so large, and so placed as to be in some degree in touch with the country, it would be in the same melancholy condition as Hyde Park. The species now found are the blackbird and thrush, greenfinch (rare) and chaffinch, robin, dunnock, and wren (the last very rare), and in summer two or three migrants are added. But most of the birds find it hard to rear any young owing to the birds'-nesting boys and loafers, who are not properly watched, and to the cats that infest the shrubberies. Even by day cats have the liberty of this park. Wood-pigeons come in numbers to feed in the early morning, and a few pairs build nests, but as a rule their eggs are taken. Carrion crows from North London visit the park on most days, and make occasional incursions into the Zoological Gardens, where they are regarded with very unfriendly feelings. They go there on the chance of picking up a crumb or two dropped from the tables of the pampered captives ; and perhaps for a peep at the crow-house, where many cor vines from many lands may be seen turning their eyes skyward, uttering at the same time a cry of recognition, to watch the sweeping flight of 176 BIRDS IX LONDON their passing relatives, who ' mock them with their loss of liberty.' The water-birds (wild) are no better off in this park than the songsters in the shrnbberies, vet it conld easily be made more attractive and .safe as a breeding-place. As it is, the dabchick .seldom succeeds in hatching eggs, and even the semi-domestic and easily satisfied moorhen finds it hard to rear any young. The other great green space in the North- west district is Hampstead Heath, which con- tains, including Parliament Hill and other portions acquired in recent years, -lOT acres. On its outer border it touches the country, in parts a very beautiful country ; while on its opposite side it abuts on London proper, forming on the south and south-east the boundary of an unutterably dreary portion of the metropolis, a congeries of large and densely-populated parishes — Kentish and Camden Towns, Hollo- way, Highbury, C'anonbury, Islington, Hoxton : thousands of acres of houses, thousands of miles of streets, vast thoroughfares full of trams and traffic and thunderous noises, interminable roads, respectable and monotonous, and menu VIEW ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH NORTH-WEST AXD XOBTH LONDON 177 streets and squalid streets innumerable. Here, then, we have a vast part of London, which is Uke the West-central and East-central districts in that it is without any open space, except the comparatively insignificant one of Highbury Fields. It is to the Heath that the inhabitants of all this portion of London must go for fresh air and verdure ; but the distance is too great for most people, and the visits are consequently made on Sundays and holidays in summer. Even this restricted use tlie}^ are able to make of ' London's playing ground,' or ' Happy Hampstead,' as it is lovingly called, must have a highly beneficial effect on the health, physical and moral, of the people. To come to the bird life of this largest of London's open spaces. Owing to its very open- ness and large extent, which makes it impossible for the constables to keep a watch on the visitors, especially on the gangs of birds'-nesting boys and young men who make it a happ}' hunting-ground during the spring and summer months, the Heath is in reality a very unfavour- able breeding-place for birds. Linnets, yellow- hammers, chaffinches, robins, several warblers, and other species nest ever}' year, but probably N 178 BIBDS IX LONDON very rarely succeed in bringing up their young. Birds are nevertheless numerous and in great variety: the large space and its openness attract them, while all about the Heath large private gardens, woods, and preserves exist, which are perfect sanctuaries for most small birds and some large species. There is a small rookery on some elm-trees at the side of the High Street ; and another close to the Heath, near Golder's Hill, on the late Sir Spencer Wells's property. And in other private grounds the carrion crow, daw, wood-pigeon, stock-dove, turtle-dove, white owl, and wood owl, green and lesser spotted woodpecker still breed. The (corncrake is occasionally heard. The following small birds, summer visitors, breed on the Heath or in the adjacent private grounds, especially in Lord Mansfield's beautiful woods : wryneck and cuckoo, grasshopper-, sedge- and reed-warblers, blackcap and garden warbler, both whitethroats, wood and willow wrens, chiffchafF, redstart, stonechat, pied wagtail, tree-pipit, red-backed shrike, spotted flycatcher, swallow, house martin, swift, and goldfinch. Wheatears visit the Heath on passage ; fieldfares may ])e seen on most days throughout the winter, and occasionally red- NORTH-WEST AND NORTH LONDON 179 wings ; also the redpole, siskin, and the grey wao^tail. The resident small birds include most of the species to be found in the county of Middlesex. The bullfnich and the hawfinch are rare. My young friend, Mr. E. C. H. Moule, who is a keen observer, has very kindly sent me his notes on the birds of Hampstead, made during a year's residence on the edge of the Heath, and taking his list with my own, and comparing them with the list made by Mr. Harting, published in Lobley's ' Hampstead Hill' in 1885, it appears that there have been very few changes in the bird population of this district during the last decade. It would be difficult to make the Heath itself a safer breeding-place for the birds, resident and migratory, that inhabit it. The only plan would be to establish small sanctuaries at suit- able spots. Unfortunately these would have to be protected from the nest-robbers by spiked iron railings, and that open wild appearance of the Heath, which is its principal charm, would be spoiled. With the ponds something can be done. There are a good number of them, large and X 2 180 BIRDS IX LONDON small, some used for bathing in summer, and all for skating in winter, but so far nothing has been done to make them attractive to the l)irds ; and it may be added that a few beds of rushes and other aquatic plants for cover, which would make them suitable habitations for several species of birds, would also greatly add to their beauty. How little would have to be done to give life and variety to these somewhat desolate- looking pieces of water, may be seen on the Heath itself. One of the smallest is the Leg of Mutton Pond, on the West Heath, a rather muddy pool where dogs are accustomed to bathe. At its narrow end it has a small bed of bulrushes, which has been inhabited by a pair of moorhens for several years past. They are very tame, and appear quite unconcerned in the presence of people standing on the margin to gaze at and admire them, and of the dogs barking and splashing about in the water a few yards away. There is no wire netting to divide their own little domain from the dogs' bathing place, and no railing on the bank. Yet here tliey live all the year round very contentedly, and rear brood after brood of young every