CHAPTER VIII

Number of species, common and uncommon—The London sparrow—His predominance, hardiness, and intelligence—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—White blackbirds—The robin—Decrease in London—Habits and disposition.

Thereare 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 be described as really common, including the robin, which in recent years has ceased to be abundant in the interior parks, and has quite disappeared from the squares, burial grounds, and other small open spaces. The five familiar species are the sparrow, starling, blackbird,song-thrush 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 London—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 precedence. ‘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 tohave risen to such a position, to have occupied, nay conquered, London, and made its human inhabitants food-providers to his nation; and, finally, 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 thatmysparrows—a few dozen that breed and live under my eyes—never see the country, nor any park, square, or other open space.

The hardiness and adaptiveness of the bird must both be great to enable it to keep its health and strength through the gloom and darkness of London winters. There is no doubt that many of our caged birds would perish at this season if they did not feed by gas or candle light. When they do not so feed it is foundthat the mortality, 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 friendliness 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—abit 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 any 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 intimately, 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 acquaintance. This bird, 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 suburb of Paris, who were playing with and tormenting him. In hisLondon 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 contentedly 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. Oncehe took a sudden violent hatred to his owner’s maid; no sooner would she enter the room where the sparrow happened to be 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 the 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 long life of eighteen years came to an end; for up to the time of dying he showed no sign of decadence. To the last his plumage and disposition were bright, and his affection for his mistress and love for his own music unabated.

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 Macgillivray 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, amarried bird, making slovenly straw nests under the tiles, and seeking his food in the gutter.

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 November, 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 onthe window-sill. After a few days’ holiday 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 the stage, the thin piping cockneyvoice, the trivial catching 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.

LOVE-SICK COCK SPARROW

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. No 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 sparrowcommunity. Shindies are of frequent occurrence all the year round, and may arise from a variety of causes; my belief is that, as they commonly 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 during the winter months 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: possibly they come in as would-be peace-makers, or policemen, but are themselves so wildly excited that they do nothing except to get into each other’s way 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 congregate at various times, when the rain is over, or when a burst of sunshine after gloomy weather makes them glad, and at sunset. Theirchorus of ringing chirruping sounds has an exceedingly pleasant effect; for although compared with the warblers’ singing it may be a somewhat rude music, by contrast with the noise of traffic 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 rain is falling. In some mysterious way he knows that the great globe is sinking beneath the 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.

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 for 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 great: the starlings’ 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 sparrow, 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 human habitations because they provide him with suitable breeding-holes; he builds in a house, or barn, or church tower, just as he does in a hole in a tree in a wild forest, or a hole in the rock on some sea-cliff,where instead of men and women he 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 returnjourney of at least four miles; and the grubs 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 every 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.

LONDON STARLINGS

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 aërial 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 the year; on any autumn or 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 musicalconversation, or concert of curiously contrasted sounds, perpetually going on among them. The airy whistle, the various chirp, the clink-clink 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 thestarling, 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 observe 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 about the pair of starlings that elected to breed the summer before last in sight of my top windows, in that brick desert where my home is. When they brought out and led their young away, I wondered if they would ever return to such a spot. Surely, thought I, they will have some recollection of the vast labour of rearing anestful of young at such 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, since 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 deserve 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 interestsof ornithological science, what they had eaten!

Between the starling and the next in order, the blackbird, there is again a very great difference with regard to numbers. The former counts thousands, the latter hundreds. Between blackbird and song-thrush, or throstle, there is not a wide difference, but if we take the whole of London, the blackbird is much more numerous. After these two, at a considerable distance, comes the robin. In suburban grounds and gardens these three common species are equally abundant. But in these same private places, which ring the metropolis round with innumerable 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 greenfinch—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 abnormally white bird. But in London the bird-killersare restrained, and the white specimen is sometimes able to keep his life for a few or even for several months. Recently (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 1895 in the shrubberies of Kensington Palace, and was killed by some scoundrel, who no doubt hoped to sell its carcass to some bird-stuffer. 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 get 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 fascinating freak of nature. He lived on, very muchadmired, 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 suburban districts where there are gardens with shrubs and trees—is now growing sadly scarce everywhere in the interior of the metropolis. In 1865 the late Shirley Hibberd wrote that this bird was very common in London: ‘Robins 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 Farringdon Street, Ludgate Hill, the Strand, and Blackfriars Road; 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 thatthis should be so, as this bright little bird is a universal favourite on account of his confidence in and familiarity with man, and his rare beauty, and because, as becomes a cousin of the nightingale, 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 abetterbird, in the sense of being gentler, sweeter-tempered, more affectionate andhuman, than other feathered creatures. But it is not so, the tender expression of his large dark eye is deceptive. The late Mr.Tristram-Valentine, writing of the starling in London, its neat, bright, glossy appearance, compared with that of the soot-blackened disreputable-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 advantage in London, if we love robins and are anxious to have plenty of them.

It is a familiar 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 reconquer 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 birds, and these fights in many instances endfatally 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 fighting all day long 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 robins are reared, but many of those that have been reared in the suburban districts drift into London, and altogether a considerable number of birds 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 suitableplaces 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.

Migration as seen in London—Swallows in the parks—Fieldfares—A flock of wild geese—Autumn movements of resident species—Wood-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-headed gull—A winter scene in St. James’s Park.

Theseasonal movements of the strict migrants are little noticed in London; there 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 vernalmigration which 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, but the small modest-coloured 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 yet 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. In 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 numbers and remain for many days, even for weeks, in the parks in autumn.

It has been conjectured that the paucity of winged insect life in London is the cause of the 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 birds lived in the central and many other parks in London, and doubtless theyfound a sufficiency of food in spite of the cold east winds which prevailed at that time.

Among the winter visitors to the outskirts of the metropolis, the fieldfare is the mostabundant as well as the most attractive. During the winters of 1895-6 and 1896-7 I saw them on numberless occasions at Wimbledon, Richmond, Hampstead Heath, Bostell Woods, Hackney 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, 1896, 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.

FIELDFARES AT THE TOWER

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 outcold 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; nevertheless 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; meanwhile 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.

The London birds are no exception, although their autumnal movements have hitherto attracted 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 growing 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 parenthad probably gone away to the 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, but 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 temperature 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.

WOOD-PIGEON FEEDING ON HAWS

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 growing in Buckingham Palacegrounds; but the berries on this tree grew at the tips of long slender branches and could not have been reached by the birds in the ordinaryway. 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 bird, unable to keep any longeronthe branch, would suddenly turn over and remain hanging head down, suspended by its clinging 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 branchlets, 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 may be looked for in the ornamental waters as early as the third week in March. The moorhens formerly disappeared from London in winter; they are now residents throughout the year in a few of theparks where there is shelter, and during severe frosts they feed at the same table with the ornamental water-fowl. 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 Richmond 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 in 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 togetherand 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 these 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. It 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 congregate every evening at their favourite roosting-places. Of these there are several, the most favoured being the islands in the ornamental water at Regent’s Park, the island in the Serpentine, and at Buckingham Palace grounds and Battersea Park. The last is the most important. Before sunset the birds are seen pouring in, flock after flock, from all quarters, until the trees on the island are blackwith 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 starlings. At the beginning 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 movement of young robins throughout the country. At all events, it is a fact that in August and September robins go about in London a gooddeal, 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 through.

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 General’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 commonthing for some foreign bird to escape from its cage on board 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 brick 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 bludgeon beaks.

This violence towards strangers of the Tower sparrow is not to be wondered at, since this unpleasant disposition or habit is common to many species. The prophet Jeremiah had observed it when he said, ‘Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird, the birds round about are against her.’ To the Tower sparrows every feathered stranger is conspicuously speckled, and they are against her. The wonder is that they should keep up their perpetual little teasing warfare against the pigeons and starlings, their neighbours from time immemorial. One would have imagined that so intelligent and practical a bird as the sparrow, after vainly tryingfor several centuries to drive out his fellow tenants, would have made peace with them and found some more profitable outlet for his superabundant energies. Possibly 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 September 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 chiffchaff, 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 battalionsand are little remarked. They are to be found, a few here and a few there, all over London, wherever there are trees and bushes, but 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 comparatively small green area at Lambeth Palace. Nunhead Cemetery is a favourite winter resort of a number of small birds—starlings, chaffinches, 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 but 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 the break-up of the frost.

During the late autumn and winter months a few large birds occasionally appear—heron, mallard, widgeon, teal, &c. As a rule they 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 river 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 correspondingexcitement among Londoners, as is proved by the numbers of people that have crowded the bridges and embankments to watch their movements. 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 discharging 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 the waterside with welcome in their faces and food in their hands must have come ‘as an absolute revelation’ to the gulls.

During the memorable frost of 1894-5 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 since experienced three exceptionally 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 generous 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 spend 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 toappear 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 with 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 round, joyfully feasting on the little fishes, cast to them in showers, to be deftly caught before they touched the water.

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