CHAPTER V

THE LADY AND THE DAW

Unfortunately, this bird had a weakness foreggs, 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 pretending not to see him; but no sooner would he be inside exploring 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 lying 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 directions. He was rescued more dead than alive, and subsequently tended by his mistress with loving care. He lived, but failed to recoverhis old gay spirits; day after day he moped in silence, a picture of abject misery, recalling in his half-naked, bruised, and bedraggled appearance 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 gayAs 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 conjectured that some compassionate-minded neighbour, finding him in his garden or grounds, and seeing his pitiable condition, had put an end to his misery.

One day, a year later, Mrs. Melford, who was just recovering from an illness, was lyingon a sofa in a room on the ground floor, when her husband, who was in the garden at the back, excitedly cried out that a wild jackdaw had just flown down and alighted near him. ‘A perfect beauty!’ he exclaimed; never had he seen a jackdaw in finer plumage! The 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 amusing 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 ending this chapter I should like to say a word about white jackdaws. It is amystery to me where all the albinos occasionally 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 nine 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 them 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 common in the blackbird than in any other species. Within the last twelve to eighteen months I have known of the existence of seven or eight whiteor partly white blackbirds in London; but during the same 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 white 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 were, and then adds: ‘I rather think that they are found in those mountainous Northern Countries, which are for the greatest part of the year covered with snow: Where also many other Animals change their native colours, and become white, asBears,Foxes,Blackbirds, &c., whether it proceeds from the force of imagination, heightened by the constant intuition of Snow, or from the cold of the Climate, occasioningsuch a languishing of colour; as we see in old Age, when the natural heat decays, the hair grows grey, 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 over an exceedingly wide area, capturing all rare and quaint and beautiful things for its own delight. Thinking 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 very 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 people would have great delight in looking at them every day? For it would indeed be a strange and beautiful sight, and many persons wouldcome from a distance solely to see the milk-white daws 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.

Positions of the rook and crow compared—Gray’s Inn Gardens rookery—Break-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 the Kensington Gardens rookery—The true history of the expulsion of the rooks—A desolate scene, and a vision of London beautified.

Wehave 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 royal 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 much pleasure or producethe same effect on the mind as the wild bird. The old London crow is worth more to London than many exotic swans and ducks and geese.

LONDON CROWS

We have also seen that the case of the jackdaw 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 theywill 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 hopeless, and on this account, in this list of the corvines, he is put last 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 the numbers have been twenty-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 unconsidered act of the Benchers, or of some ignorantperson in authority among them. It was thought that the trees would 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 regarded 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 atmosphere and the long distances they are obligedto travel in quest of grubs and 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 in 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 be 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 bird which is more to us than any other wild bird, on account of its large size and interesting socialhabits, its high intelligence, and the confidence it reposes in man; and, finally, of that ancient kindly regard and pride in it which, in some degree, is felt by all persons throughout the kingdom. The rook has other claims to our esteem and affection which are not so generally known: in a domestic state it is no whit behind 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 something 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 flyabout 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 very curious. Early every morning he flew into her bedroom by the open window, and alighting on 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 hair 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 asbad a case; to his mind we are nothing but bigger rooks, somewhat 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 disappeared 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 tobe saying: ‘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 restoring it to its owner, who is my very good friend.’

During his summer 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 neighbourhood 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. One day his mistress was walking in the Row, at an hour when it was full of fashionable people, and the rook, winging his way homewards from the gardens, spied her, and circling down alighted 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 with her hand, while he rubbed his beak against her cheek; ‘if you were as fond of the birds as I am, and treated them as well,they would be glad to come down on to your shoulders, too.’

This happened when the now vanished rooks had their populous rookery in Kensington Gardens, 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 goingeast 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 became 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 sofar 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, so 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. Recalling the sensations 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 noble grove.Whywas 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! 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 notmany 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 the 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 nigh impossible that they should have perfect health; but trees take long to die, and during decay are still beautiful.Not far from London is a tree which Aubrey described as very 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 thousands 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 couldwalk in that part of the grounds without soiling his boots.

It will hardly be 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, they would not abandon the gardens where they had bred for generations, but would build new nests on other 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, with no fewer than fourteen nests on it: they were sharply ordered to cut down the lot. And cut down they were, with disastrous consequences, as we know, as during the next few years many scores of thefinest trees on the north side of the gardens were blown down 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 may now regard 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 Kensington 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 Register.’

It must be borne in mind that to a vastmajority of this population of five millions London is a permanent home, 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 value, to be prized above all others, like an amulet or a thrice-precious gem containing mysterious health-giving properties. He, then, who 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 community, 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 their memories when they are no more, and cherish their fame, and hand it on from generation to generation. In honouring them we honour ourselves. But praise and glory would be without significance, and love of our benefactors would lose its best virtue, its peculiarsweetness, if such a feeling did not have its bitter opposite 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 recovery, and had been absent from London. It was a bright and beautiful morning 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, theother with a small hand-hatchet, which flew off the handle at every stroke. Seeing that I was observing their 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 transparent 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.

Presently an exceedingly wasted, miserable-looking, decrepid old woman came by, bent almost double under a ragged shawl full of sticks and brushwood which she had gathered where the men were now engaged in lopping off the branchesof a tree they had just felled. ‘My! she’s got a load, ain’t she, Bill?’ cried the first urchin again. ‘Oh, if we had a penny, now!’

I asked him what he meant, and very readily and volubly he explained 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. I relented at that and gave them a penny, and with a whoop of joy at their success they ran off to where the men were working.

Then I turned to leave the gardens, nodding a good-bye to the young woman, who was still standing there. The slight smile and expression of slight interest, that curious baffling expression 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, behind 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 comforting things to me, telling me not to grieve 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 avision 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 happy, green homes of squirrel and bird 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 with gladness, and, uprising, dance in the sepulchre.

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 appearance and habits—An æsthetic bird—Its increase—The dabchick in London—Its increase—Appearance and habits—At Clissold Park—The stock-dove in London.

Ofthe species which have established 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, producing 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 gracefulcurve to its tree again, and listening to the beautiful sound of its human-like plaint, which may be 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.

Twenty years ago the wood-pigeon 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—Ravenscourt, Brondesbury, Clissold and Brockwell 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 birds to abandon the parks sometime during the seventies. But from 1883, when a single pair nested in Buckingham Palace Gardens, wood-pigeons have increased and spread from year to year until the present time, when there is not any park with large old trees, orwith 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 Soho 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 neighbourhood, on trees growing in private grounds.

Even in the heart of the smoky, roaring 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 Railway 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, whendisturbed, invariably fly to a terrace of houses close by and perch on the chimney-pots, a newly acquired habit. In Leicester Square I 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 commanding position. I never admired that marble until I saw it thus occupied by the pretty dove-coloured guest, 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 which our public places are furnished, if not adorned.

WOOD-PIGEON ON SHAKESPEARE’S STATUE

So numerous are the wood-pigeons at theend of summer in their favourite parks that it is easy for any person, by throwing a few handfuls of grain, 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 their 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.

Next to the ringdove in importance—and a bird of a more fascinating personality, if such 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 undertail, yellow and scarlet beak and frontal shield, and large green legs.Green-legged little henis 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 beings, in a semi-domestic state. But after all that 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. Thus, in a pond in West London I saw a moorhen act in a manner which, so far as I know, had never been described; and I must confess that if somefriend 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 walkbackwards, 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 Ruskin has called the moorhen’s ‘human domesticity of temper, with curious fineness of sagacity 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 æsthetic taste he has the following anecdote. A pair of very tame moorhens that lived in the grounds of aclergyman, in Cheadle, Staffordshire, in constantly adding to the materials of their nest and decorating it, made real havoc in the garden; the hen was once seen sitting on her eggs ‘surrounded with a brilliant wreath of scarlet anemones.’ An instance equally remarkable occurred in 1896 in Battersea Park. A pair of moorhens took it into their fantastic little heads to build 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 been woven into its fabric, and so arranged that the four broad tips stood free above 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 structure and habits it cannot keep pace with the other bird’s increase. It must have water, and some rushes, or weeds, or bushes to make itsnest in; and wherever these are found, however small the pond may be, there the moorhen will live very contentedly.

A very few years ago it 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 atmosphere, frightened by strange noises and confused 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, kingfisher, 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 additions to the wild bird life of the metropolis.

The little grebe, before it formed a settlement, was also an occasional visitor during its springand autumn travels; and in 1870, when there was a visitation on a large scale, as many as one hundred little grebes 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 the 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, being less than the teal in size, and indeed is known to comparatively few persons. Nevertheless he is a welcome addition to our wild bird life, and is, to those who know him, a wonderfully interesting little creature, clothed in a denseunwettable plumage, olive, black, and chestnut in colour, his legs set far back—‘becoming almost a fish’s tail indeed, rather than a bird’s legs,’ the lobed feet in shape like a horse-chestnut leaf. His habits are as curious as his structure. His nest is a raft made of a mass of water-weeds, moored to the rushes or to a drooping branch, and sometimes it breaks from its moorings and floats away, carrying eggs and sitting bird on it. On quitting the nest the bird invariably draws a coverlet of wet weedsover the eggs; the nest in appearance is then nothing but a bunch of dead vegetable rubbish floating in the water. When the young are out of the eggs, the parent birds are accustomed to take them under their wings, just as a man might take a parcel under his arm, and dive into the water.

DABCHICK ON NEST

Another curious habit of the dabchick was discovered during the summer of 1896 in Clissold Park, when, for the second time, a pair of these birds settled in the too small piece of water at that place. Unfortunately, their nest was attacked and repeatedly destroyed by the moorhens, who took a dislike to these ‘new chums,’ and by the swans, who probably found that the wet materials used by the little grebe in building its nest were good to eat. Now, it was observed that when the nest was made on deep water, where the swans could swim up to it, the dabchicks defended it by diving and pecking at, or biting, the webbed feet of the assailants under water. It was a curious duel between a pigmy and a giant—one a stately man-of-war floating on the water, the other a small submerged torpedo, very active and intelligent. The swans were greatly disconcerted and repeatedly driven off by means ofthis strategy, but in the end the brave little divers were beaten, and reared no young.

The moral of this incident, which applies not only to Clissold but to Brockwell, Dulwich, and to a dozen other parks, is that you cannot have a big aquatic happy family in a very small pond.

But it is extremely encouraging to all those who wish for a ‘better friendship’ with the fowls of the air to find that this contest was watched with keen interest and sympathy with the defenders by the superintendent of a London park and the park constables.

It is curious to note that the three species we have been considering, differing so widely in their structures and habits, should be so closely associated in the history of London wild bird life. That they should have established colonies at very nearly about the same time, and very nearly at the same centre, from which they have subsequently spread over the metropolis; and that this centre, the cradle of the London races of these birds, should continue to be their most favoured resort. Seeing the numbers of wood-pigeons to-day, and their tameness everywhere, the statement will seemalmost incredible to many readers that only fifteen years ago, one spring morning, the head gardener at Buckingham Palace, full of excitement, made a hurried visit to a friend to tell him that a pair of these birds had actually built a nest on a tree in the Palace grounds. Up till now the birds are most numerous in this part of London. The moorhen, I believe, bred first at St. James’s Park about seventeen years ago; a few days ago—January 1898—I saw twelve of these birds in a little scattered flock feeding in the grass in this park. In no other public park in London can so many be seen together. The dabchick first bred in St. James’s Park about fifteen years ago, and last summer, 1897, as many as seven broods were brought out. In no other London park were there more than two broods.

The three species described are the only permanent additions in recent years to the wild bird life of the metropolis. But when it is considered that their colonies were self-planted, and have shown a continuous growth, while great changes of decrease and increase have meanwhile been going on in the old-established colonies, we findgood reason for the hope that other species, previously unknown to the metropolis, 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, or 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.

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