Birds in London
by W. H. Hudson · English · Gutenberg #40334 · 416,466 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Birds in London
Author: W. H. Hudson
Illustrator: Bryan Hook
A. D. McCormick
Photographer: R. B. Lodge
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Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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[Illustration: 'THE CROW WITH HIS VOICE OF CARE']
BIRDS IN LONDON
by
W. H. HUDSON, F.Z.S.
Illustrated by Bryan Hook, A. D. Mccormick
and from Photographs from Nature by R. B. Lodge
Longmans, Green, and Co.
39 Paternoster Row, London
New York and Bombay
1898
All rights reserved
PREFACE
The opening chapter contains, by way of introduction, all that need be
said concerning the object and scope of this work; it remains to say
here that, as my aim has been to furnish an account of the London wild
bird life of to-day, there was little help to be had from the writings
of previous observers. These mostly deal with the central parks, and are
interesting now, mainly, as showing the changes that have taken place.
At the end of the volume a list will be found of the papers and books on
the subject which are known to me. This list will strike many readers as
an exceedingly meagre one, when it is remembered that London has always
been a home of ornithologists--that from the days of Oliver Goldsmith,
who wrote pleasantly of the Temple Gardens rookery, and of Thomas
Pennant and his friend Daines Barrington, there have never been wanting
observers of the wild bird life within our gates: The fact remains that,
with the exception of a few incidental passages to be found in various
ornithological works, nothing was expressly written about the birds of
London until James Jennings's 'Ornithologia' saw the light a little over
seventy years ago. Jennings's work was a poem, probably the worst ever
written in the English language; but as he inserted copious notes,
fortunately in prose, embodying his own observations on the bird life of
east and south-east London, the book has a very considerable interest
for us to-day. Nothing more of importance appeared until the late
Shirley Hibberd's lively paper on 'London Birds' in 1865. From that date
onward the subject has attracted an increased attention, and at present
we have a number of London or park naturalists, as they might be called,
who view the resident London species as adapted to an urban life, and
who chronicle their observations in the 'Field,' 'Nature,' 'Zoologist,'
'Nature Notes,' and other natural history journals, and in the
newspapers and magazines.
To return to the present work. Treating of actualities I have been
obliged for the most part to gather my own materials, relying perhaps
too much on my own observation; since London is now too vast a field for
any person, however diligent, to know it intimately in all its extent.
Probably any reader who is an observer of birds on his own account, and
has resided for some years near a park or other open space in London,
will be able to say, by way of criticism, that I have omitted some
important or interesting fact known to him--something that ought to have
had a place in a work of this kind. In such a case I can only plead
either that the fact was not known to me, or that I had some good reason
for not using it. Moreover, there is a limit to the amount of matter
which can be included in a book of this kind, and a selection had to be
made from a large number of facts and anecdotes I had got together.
All the matter contained in this book, with the exception of one
article, or part of an article, on London birds, in the 'Saturday
Review,' now appears for the first time.
In conclusion, I have to express my warm thanks to those who have helped
me in my task, by supplying me with fresh information, and in other
ways.
W. H. H.
LONDON: _April_, 1898.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE BIRDS AND THE BOOK
PAGE
A handbook of London birds considered--Reasons for not writing
it--Changes in the character of the wild bird population, and
supposed cause--The London sparrow--Its abundance--Bread-begging
habits--Monotony--Its best appearance--Beautiful finches--Value
of open spaces--The sparrows' afternoon tea in Hyde Park--Purpose
of this book 1
CHAPTER II
CROWS IN LONDON
A short general account of the London crows--The magpie--The
jay--London ravens--The Enfield ravens--The Hyde Park ravens--The
Tower ravens--The carrion crow, rook, and jackdaw 20
CHAPTER III
THE CARRION CROW IN THE BALANCE
The crow in London--Persecuted in the royal parks--Degradation
of Hyde Park--Ducks in the Serpentine: how they are
thinned--Shooting a chicken with a revolver--Habits of the Hyde
Park mallard--Anecdotes--Number of London crows--The crow a
long-lived bird: a bread-eater--Anecdote--Seeks its food on the
river--The crow as a pet--Anecdotes 32
CHAPTER IV
THE LONDON DAW
Rarity of the daw in London--Pigeons and daws compared--Æsthetic
value of the daw as a cathedral bird--Kensington Palace daws;
their disposition and habits--Friendship with rooks--Wandering
daws at Clissold Park--Solitary daws--Mr. Mark Melford's
birds--Rescue of a hundred daws--The strange history of an
egg-stealing daw--White daws--White ravens--Willughby's
speculations--A suggestion 52
CHAPTER V
EXPULSION OF THE ROOKS
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 68
CHAPTER VI
RECENT COLONISTS
The wood-pigeon in Kensington Gardens--Its increase--Its beauty
and charm--Perching on Shakespeare's statue in Leicester
Square--Change of habits--The moorhen--Its 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 89
CHAPTER VII
LONDON'S LITTLE BIRDS
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 104
CHAPTER VIII
MOVEMENTS OF LONDON BIRDS
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 129
CHAPTER IX
A SURVEY OF THE PARKS: WEST LONDON
A general survey of the metropolitan parks--West London--Central
parks, with Holland Park--A bird's highway--Decrease of
songsters--The thrush in Kensington Gardens--Suggestions--Owls
in Kensington Gardens--Other West London open spaces--Ravenscourt
Park as it was and as it is 151
CHAPTER X
NORTH-WEST AND NORTH LONDON
Open spaces on the borders of West London--The Scrubs, Old Oak
Common, and Kensal Green Cemetery--North-west district--Paddington
Recreation Ground, Kilburn Park, and adjoining open
spaces--Regent's Park described--Attractive to birds, but not
safe--Hampstead Heath: its character and bird life--The ponds--A
pair of moorhens--An improvement suggested--North London
districts--Highgate Woods, Churchyard Bottom Wood, Waterlow Park,
and Highgate Cemetery--Finsbury Park--A paradise of
thrushes--Clissold Park and Abney Park Cemetery 171
CHAPTER XI
EAST LONDON
Condition of the East district--Large circular group of open
spaces--Hackney Downs and London Fields--Victoria Park with Hackney
Common--Smoky atmosphere--Bird life--Lakes--An improvement
suggested--Chaffinch fanciers--Hackney Marsh with North and
South Mill Fields--Unique character of the Marsh--White House
Fishery--The vanished sporting times--Anecdotes--Collection of
rare birds--A region of marshes--Wanstead Old Park--Woodland
character--Bird life--Heronry and rookery--A suggestion 192
CHAPTER XII
SOUTH-EAST LONDON
General survey of South London--South-east London: its most populous
portion--Three small open spaces--Camberwell New Park--Southwark
Park--Kennington Park--Fine shrubberies--Greenwich Park and
Blackheath--A stately and depressing park--Mutilated trees--The
extreme East--Bostell Woods and Heath--Their peculiar
charm--Woolwich and Plumstead Commons--Hilly Fields--Peckham
Rye and Park--A remonstrance--Nunhead and Camberwell
Cemeteries--Dulwich Park--Brockwell Park--The rookery 216
CHAPTER XIII
SOUTH-WEST LONDON
Introductory remarks--Comparative large extent of public
ground in South-west London--Battersea Park--Character and
popularity--Bird life--Clapham Common: its present and past
character--Wandsworth Common--The yellowhammer--Tooting
Common--Tooting Bec--Questionable improvements--A passion
for swans--Tooting Graveney--Streatham Common--Bird
life--Magpies--Rookery--Bishop's Park, Fulham--A suggestion--Barn
Elms Park--Barnes Common--A burial-ground--Birds--Putney Heath,
Lower Putney Common, and Wimbledon Common--Description--Bird
life--Rookeries--The badger--Richmond Park--Its vast extent and
character--Bird life--Daws--Herons--The charm of large soaring
birds--Kew Gardens--List of birds--Unfavourable changes--The
Queen's private grounds 237
CHAPTER XIV
PROTECTION OF BIRDS IN THE PARKS
Object of this book--Summary of facts contained in previous
chapters--An incidental result of changes in progress--Some degree
of protection in all the open spaces, efficient protection in
none--Mischievous visitors to the parks--Bird fanciers and
stealers--The destructive rough--The barbarians are few--Two
incidents at Clissold Park--Love of birds a common feeling of
the people 270
CHAPTER XV
THE CAT QUESTION
The cat's unchangeable character--A check on the sparrows--Number
of sparrows in London--What becomes of the annual increase--No
natural check on the park sparrows--Cats in the parks--Story of
a cat at Battersea Park--Rabbits destroyed by cats in Hyde
Park--Number of cats in London--Ownerless cats--Their miserable
condition--How cats are made ownerless--How this evil may be
remedied--How to keep cats out of the parks 284
CHAPTER XVI
BIRDS FOR LONDON
Restoration of the rook--The Gray's Inn rookery--Suggestions--On
attracting rooks--Temple Gardens rookery--Attempt to
establish a rookery at Clissold Park--A new colony of
daws--Hawks--Domestic pigeons--An abuse--Stock-dove
and turtle-dove--Ornamental water-fowl, pinioned and
unpinioned--Suggestions--Wild water-fowl in the parks--Small
birds for London--Missel-thrush--Nuthatch--Wren--Loudness a
merit--Summer visitants to London--Kingfisher--Hard-billed
birds--A use for the park sparrows--Natural checks--A sanctuary
described 304
BIBLIOGRAPHY 330
INDEX 331
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
'THE CROW WITH HIS VOICE OF CARE' _Frontispiece_
'THE SEVEN SISTERS' _to face p._ 24
CARRION CROW'S NEST " 34
PIGEONS AT THE LAW COURTS " 52
WOOD-PIGEON ON SHAKESPEARE'S STATUE " 92
LOVE-SICK COCK SPARROW " 112
FEEDING THE GULLS AT ST. JAMES'S PARK " 148
MAP OF LONDON " 156
VIEW ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH " 176
WHITE HOUSE FISHERY, HACKNEY MARSH " 206
WANSTEAD OLD PARK: EARLY SPRING " 214
BOSTELL HEATH AND WOODS " 226
THE ROOKERY, BROCKWELL PARK " 234
WIMBLEDON COMMON " 256
NEST OF CHAFFINCH " 280
PARK SPARROWS " 290
MOORHEN AND CHICKS " 316
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
PAGE
PARK SPARROW BEGGING 11
THE LAST RAVEN 21
THE LADY AND THE DAW 60
LONDON CROWS 69
DABCHICK ON NEST 99
LONDON STARLINGS 119
FIELDFARES AT THE TOWER 131
WOOD-PIGEON FEEDING ON HAWS 136
RAVENSCOURT PARK 153
CORMORANTS AT ST. JAMES'S PARK 170
DABCHICK FEEDING ITS YOUNG 189
NIGHTINGALE ON ITS NEST 249
CHAFFINCH 271
STARLING AT HOME 303
DABCHICK'S FLOATING NEST: ST. JAMES'S PARK 329
BIRDS IN LONDON
CHAPTER I
THE BIRDS AND THE BOOK
A handbook of London birds considered--Reasons for not writing
it--Changes in the character of the wild bird population, and
supposed cause--The London sparrow--Its abundance--Bread-begging
habits--Monotony--Its best appearance--Beautiful finches--Value of
open spaces--The sparrows' afternoon tea in Hyde Park--Purpose of
this book.
Among the many little schemes and more or less good intentions which
have flitted about my brain like summer flies in a room, there was one
for a small volume on London birds; to contain, for principal matter,
lists of the species resident throughout the year, of the visitants,
regular and occasional, and of the vanished species which have inhabited
the metropolis in recent, former, or historical times. For everyone,
even the veriest Dryasdust among us, has some glow of poetic feeling
in him, some lingering regret for the beautiful that has vanished and
returneth not; consequently, it would be hard in treating of London bird
life not to go back to times which now seem very ancient, when the kite
was common--the city's soaring scavenger, protected by law, just as the
infinitely less attractive turkey-buzzard is now protected in some towns
of the western world. Again, thanks to Mr. Harting's researches into old
records, we have the account of beautiful white spoonbills, associated
with herons, building their nests on the tree-tops in the Bishop of
London's grounds at Fulham.
To leave this fascinating theme. It struck me at first that the book
vaguely contemplated might be made useful to lovers and students of
bird life in London; and I was also encouraged by the thought that the
considerable amount of printed material which exists relating to the
subject would make the task of writing it comparatively easy.
But I no sooner looked attentively into the subject than I saw how
difficult it really was, and how unsatisfactory, and I might almost add
useless, the work would prove.
To begin with, what is London? It is a very big town, a 'province
covered with houses'; but for the ornithologist where, on any side, does
the province end? Does it end five miles south of Charing Cross, at
Sydenham, or ten miles further afield, at Downe? Or, looking north, do
we draw the line at Hampstead, or Aldenham? The whole metropolitan area
has, let us say, a circumference of about ninety miles, and within its
outermost irregular boundary there is room for half a dozen concentric
lines, each of which will contain a London, differing greatly in size
and, in a much less degree, in character. If the list be made to include
all the birds found in such rural and even wild places--woods, thickets,
heaths, and marshes--as exist within a sixteen-mile radius, it is clear
that most of the inland species found in the counties of Kent, Surrey,
Middlesex, Hertfordshire, and Essex would be in it.
The fact is, in drawing up a list of London birds, the writer can,
within limits, make it as long or short as he thinks proper. Thus, if he
wishes to have a long list, and is partial to round numbers, he will be
able to get a century of species by making his own twelve or thirteen
mile radius. Should he then alter his mind, and think that a modest
fifty would content him, all he would have to do to get that number
would be to contract his line, bringing it somewhere near the
indeterminate borders of inner London, where town and country mix or
pass into each other. Now a handbook written on this plan would be
useful only if a very exact boundary were drawn, and the precise
locality given in which each resident or breeding species had its
haunts, where the student or lover of birds could watch or listen for it
with some chance of being rewarded. Even so, the book would not serve
its purpose for a longer period than two or three years; after three
years it would most certainly be out of date, so great and continuous
is the growth of London on all sides. Thus, going round London, keeping
to that partly green indeterminate borderland already mentioned, there
are many little hidden rustic spots where in the summer of 1897 the
woodpecker, green and spotted, and the nuthatch and tree-creeper bred;
also the nightingale, bottle-tit, and wryneck, and jay and crow, and
kestrel and white and brown owl; but who can say that they will breed in
the same places in 1899, or even in 1898? For these little green rustic
refuges are situated on the lower slopes of a volcano, which is always
in a state of eruption, and year by year they are being burnt up and
obliterated by ashes and lava.
* * * * *
After I had at once and for ever dropped, for the reasons stated, all
idea of a handbook, the thought remained that there was still much to be
said about London bird life which might be useful, although in another
way. The subject was often in my mind during the summer months of 1896
and 1897, which, for my sins, I was compelled to spend in town. During
this wasted and dreary period, when I was often in the parks and open
spaces in all parts of London, I was impressed more than I had been
before with the changes constantly going on in the character of the bird
population of the metropolis. These changes are not rapid enough to show
a marked difference in a space of two or three years; but when we take a
period of fifteen or twenty years, they strike us as really very great.
They are the result of the gradual decrease in numbers and final dying
out of many of the old-established species, chiefly singing birds, and,
at the same time, the appearance of other species previously unknown in
London, and their increase and diffusion. Considering these two facts,
one is inclined to say off-hand that the diminution or dying out of one
set of species is simply due to the fact that they are incapable of
thriving in the conditions in which they are placed; that the London
smoke is fatal in the long run to some of the more delicate birds, as it
undoubtedly is to the rose and other plants that require pure air and
plenty of sunshine; and that, on the other hand, the new colonists
that are increasing are species of a coarser fibre, greater vitality,
and able, like the plane-tree in the plant world, to thrive in such
conditions. It is really not so: the tits and finches, the robin,
wren, hedge-sparrow, pied wagtail, some of the warblers, and the
missel-thrush, are as vigorous and well able to live in London as
the wood-pigeon. They are, moreover, very much more prolific than the
pigeon, and find their food with greater ease. Yet we see that these
lively, active species are dying out, while the slow, heavy dove, which
must eat largely to live, and lays but two eggs on a frail platform of
sticks for nest, is rapidly increasing.
Here then, it seemed, was a subject which it might be for the advantage
of the bird-lovers in London to consider; and I write in the conviction
that there are as many Londoners who love the sight and sound of wild
bird life as there are who find refreshment in trees and grass and
flowers, who are made glad by the sight of a blue sky, to whom the
sunshine is sweet and pleasant to behold.
* * * * *
In going about London, after my mind had begun to dwell on this subject,
I was frequently amused, and sometimes teased, by the sight and sound
of the everywhere-present multitudinous sparrow. In London there are no
grain-growers and market-gardeners, consequently there is no tiresome
sparrow question, and no sparrow-clubs to vex the tender-hearted. These
sparrows were not to be thought about in their relation to agriculture,
but were simply little birds, too often, in many a weary mile, in many
an unlovely district, the only representatives of the avian class,
flying to and fro, chirping and chirruping from dawn to dark; nor birds
only: I had them also for butterflies, seen sometimes in crowds and
clouds, as in the tropics, with no rich nor splendid colouring on their
wings; and I had them for cicadas, and noisy locusts of arboreal habits,
hundreds and thousands of them, whirring in a subdued way in the park
trees during the sultry hours. They were all these things and scavengers
as well, ever busy at their scavengering in the dusty and noisy ways;
everywhere finding some organic matter to comfort their little stomachs,
or to carry to their nestlings.
At times the fanciful idea would occur to me that I was on a commission
appointed to inquire into the state of the wild bird life of London, or
some such subject, and that my fellow commissioners were sparrows, so
incessantly were they with me, though in greatly varying numbers, during
my perambulations.
After all, the notion that they attended or accompanied me in my walks
was not wholly fanciful. For no sooner does any person enter any public
garden or park, or other open space where there are trees, than, if
he be not too absorbed in his own thoughts, he will see that several
sparrows are keeping him company, flying from tree to tree, or bush to
bush, alighting occasionally on the ground near him, watching his every
movement; and if he sit down on a chair or bench several of them will
come close to him, and hop this way and that before him, uttering a
little plaintive note of interrogation--_Have you got nothing for us?_
They have come to look on every human being who walks among the park
trees and round the garden-beds as a mere perambulating machine for the
distribution of fragments of bread. The sparrow's theory or philosophy
of life, from our point of view, is very ridiculous, but he finds it
profitable, and wants no better.
I remember that during those days, when the little creatures were so
much with me, whether I wanted them or no, some person wrote to one of
the newspapers to say that he had just made the acquaintance of the
common sparrow in a new character. The sparrow was and always had been
a familiar bird to him, but he had never previously seen it gathered in
crowds at its 'afternoon tea' in Hyde Park, a spectacle which he had now
witnessed with surprise and pleasure.
If (I thought) this innumerous feathered company could only be varied
somewhat, the modest plumage retouched, by Nature, with harmonious
olive green and yellow tints, pure greys and pure browns, with rose,
carmine, tile and chestnut reds; and if the monotonous little burly
forms could be reshaped, and made in some cases larger, in others
smaller, some burlier still and others slimmer, more delicate and aërial
in appearance, the spectacle of their afternoon tea would be infinitely
more attractive and refreshing than it now is to many a Londoner's tired
eyes.
Their voices, too--for the refashioned mixed crowd would have a various
language, like the species that warble and twitter and call musically to
one another in orchard and copse--would give a new and strange delight
to the listener.
No doubt the sparrow is, to quote the letter-writer's expression, 'a
jolly little fellow,' quite friendly with his supposed enemy man,
amusing in his tea-table manners, and deserving of all the praise and
crumbs we give him. He is even more. To those who have watched him
begging for and deftly catching small scraps of bread, suspended like a
hawk-moth in the air before the giving hand, displaying his conspicuous
black gorget and the pale ash colour of his under surface, while his
rapidly vibrating wings are made silky and translucent by the sunlight
passing through them, he appears, indeed, a pretty and even graceful
creature.
[Illustration: PARK SPARROW BEGGING]
But he is, after all, only a common sparrow, a mean representative of
bird life in our midst; in all the æsthetic qualities which make birds
charming--beauty of form and colour, grace of motion, and melody--less
than the least of the others. Therefore to greatly praise him is to
publish our ignorance, or, at all events, to make it appear that he
is admired because, being numerous and familiar with man, he has been
closely and well looked at, while the wilder and less common species
have only been seen at a distance, and therefore indistinctly.
A distinguished American writer on birds once visited England in order
to make the acquaintance of our most noted feathered people, and in
his haste pronounced the chaffinch the 'prettiest British songster.'
Doubtless he had seen it oftenest, and closely, and at its best; but he
would never have expressed such an opinion if he had properly seen many
other British singing birds; if, for instance (confining ourselves to
the fringilline family), he had seen his 'shilfa's' nearest relation,
the brambling, in his black dress beautifully variegated with buff
and brown; or the many-coloured cirl-bunting; or that golden image of
a bird, the yellowhammer; or the green siskin, 'that lovely little
oddity,' seeking his food, tit-like, among the pine needles, or clinging
to pendulous twigs; or the linnet in his spring plumage--pale grey and
richest brown and carmine--singing among the flowery gorse; or the
goldfinch, flitting amidst the apple-bloom in May, or feeding on the
thistle in July and August, clinging to the downy heads, twittering as
he passes from plant to plant, showing his gay livery of crimson, black,
and gold; or the sedentary bullfinch, a miniature hawk in appearance,
with a wonderful rose-coloured breast, sitting among the clustering
leaves of a dark evergreen--yew or holly.
Beautiful birds are all these, and there are others just as beautiful in
other passerine families, but alas! they are at a distance from us; they
live in the country, and it is only that small 'whiff of the country'
to be enjoyed in a public park which fate allows to the majority of
Londoners, the many thousands of toilers from year's end to year's end,
and their wives and children.
To those of us who take an annual holiday, and, in addition, an
occasional run in the country, or who are not bound to town, it is
hardly possible to imagine how much is meant by that little daily
or weekly visit to a park. Its value to the confined millions has
accordingly never been, and probably cannot be, rightly estimated.
For the poor who have not those periods of refreshment which others
consider so necessary to their health and contentment, the change from
the close, adulterated atmosphere of the workshop and the living-room,
and stone-paved noisy street, to the open, green, comparatively quiet
park, is indeed great, and its benefit to body and mind incalculable.
The sight of the sun; of the sky, no longer a narrow strip, but wide,
infinite over all; the freshness of the unconfined air which the lungs
drink in; the green expanse of earth, and large trees standing apart,
away from houses--all this produces a shock of strange pleasure and
quickens the tired pulse with sudden access of life. In a small way--sad
it is to think in how small a way!--it is a return to nature, an escape
for the moment from the prison and sick-room of unnatural conditions;
and the larger and less artificial the park or open space, and the more
abounding in wild, especially bird, life, the more restorative is the
effect.
It is indeed invariably the animal life which exercises the greatest
attraction and is most exhilarating. It is really pathetic to see how
many persons of the working class come every day, all the year round,
but especially in the summer months, to that minute transcript of wild
nature in Hyde Park at the spot called the Dell, where the Serpentine
ends. They are drawn thither by the birds--the multitude of sparrows
that gather to be fed, and the wood-pigeons, and a few moorhens that
live in the rushes.
'I call these my chickens, and I'm obliged to come every day to feed
them,' said a paralytic-looking white-haired old man in the shabbiest
clothes, one evening as I stood there; then, taking some fragments of
stale bread from his pockets, he began feeding the sparrows, and while
doing so he chuckled with delight, and looked round from time to time
to see if the others were enjoying the spectacle.
To him succeeded two sedate-looking labourers, big, strong men, with
tired, dusty faces, on their way home from work. Each produced from his
coat-pocket a little store of fragments of bread and meat, saved from
the midday meal, carefully wrapped up in a piece of newspaper. After
bestowing their scraps on the little brown-coated crowd, one spoke:
'Come on, mate, they've had it all, and now let's go home and see what
the missus has got for _our_ tea'; and home they trudged across the
park, with hearts refreshed and lightened, no doubt, to be succeeded by
others and still others, London workmen and their wives and children,
until the sun had set and the birds were all gone.
Here then is an object lesson which no person who is capable of
reading the emotions in the countenance, who has any sympathy with his
fellow-creatures, can fail to be impressed by. Not only at that spot
in Hyde Park may it be seen, but at all the parks and open spaces in
London; in some more than others, as at St. James's Park, where the
gulls are fed during the winter months, and at Battersea and Regent's
Parks, where the starlings congregate every evening in July and August.
What we see is the perpetual hunger of the heart and craving of those
who are compelled to live apart from Nature, who have only these
momentary glimpses of her face, and of the refreshment they experience
at sight of trees and grass and water, and, above everything, of wild
and glad animal life. How important, then, that the most should be
made of our few suitable open spaces; that everything possible should
be done to maintain in them an abundant and varied wild bird life!
Unfortunately, this has not been seen, else we should not have lost so
much, especially in the royal parks. In some of the parks under the
County Council there are great signs of improvement, an evident anxiety
to protect and increase the stock of wild birds; but even here the most
zealous of the superintendents are not fully conscious of the value of
what they are themselves doing. They are encouraging the wild birds
because they are considered 'ornaments' to the park, just as they plant
rhododendrons and other exotic shrubs that have big gaily-coloured
flowers in their season, and as they exhibit some foreign bird of
gorgeous plumage in the park aviary. They have not yet grasped the
fact--I hope Mr. Sexby, the excellent head of the parks department, will
pardon my saying it--that the feathered inhabitants of our open spaces
are something more than 'ornaments'; that the sight and sound of any
wild bird, from the croaking carrion crow to the small lyrical kitty
wren or tinkling tomtit, will afford more pleasure to the Londoner--in
other words, conduce more to his health and happiness--than all the
gold pheasants and other brightly-apparelled prisoners, native and
foreign, to be seen in the park cages.
* * * * *
From the foregoing it will be seen that this little book, which comes
in place of the one I had, in a vague way, once thought of writing,
is in some degree a book with a purpose. Birds are not considered
merely as objects of interest to the ornithologist and to a few other
persons--objects or creatures which the great mass of the people of
the metropolis have really nothing to do with, and vaguely regard as
something at a distance, of no practical import, or as wholly unrelated
to their urban life. Rather they are considered as a necessary part of
those pleasure- and health-giving transcripts of nature which we retain
and cherish as our best possessions--the open sun-lit and tree-shaded
spaces, green with grass and bright with water; so important a part
indeed, as bringing home to us that glad freedom and wildness which is
our best medicine, that without it all the rest would lose much of its
virtue.
But on this point--the extreme pleasure which the confined Londoner
experiences in seeing and hearing wild birds, and the consequent value
of our wild bird life--enough has been said in this place, as it will be
necessary to return to the subject in one of the concluding chapters.
CHAPTER II
CROWS IN LONDON
A short general account of the London crows--The magpie--The
jay--London ravens--The Enfield ravens--The Hyde Park ravens--The
Tower ravens--The carrion crow, rook, and jackdaw.
There are not many crows in London; the number of the birds that are
left are indeed few, and, if we exclude the magpie and jay, there
are only three species. But the magpie and jay cannot be left out
altogether, when we find both species still existing at a distance of
six and a half to seven miles from Charing Cross. The magpie is all but
lost; at the present time there are no more than four birds inhabiting
inner London, doubtless escaped from captivity, and afraid to leave the
parks in which they found refuge--those islands of verdure in the midst
of a sea, or desert, of houses. One bird, the survivor of a pair, has
his home in St. James's Park, and is the most interesting figure in that
haunt of birds; a spirited creature, a great hater and persecutor of
the carrion crows when they come. The other three consort together in
Regent's Park; once or twice they have built a nest, but failed to hatch
their eggs. Probably all three are females. When, some time ago, the
'Son of the Marshes' wrote that the magpie had been extirpated in his
own county of Surrey, and that to see it he should have to visit the
London parks, he made too much of these escaped birds, which may be
numbered on the fingers of one hand. Yet we know that the pie was
formerly--even in this century--quite common in London. Yarrell, in
his 'British Birds,' relates that he once saw twenty-three together in
Kensington Gardens. In these gardens they bred, probably for the last
time, in 1856. Nor, so far as I know, do any magpies survive in the
woods and thickets on the outskirts of the metropolis, except at two
spots in the south-west district. The fate of the last pair at Hampstead
has been related by Harting, in Lobley's 'Hampstead Hill' (London,
1889). For several years this pair had their nest in an unclimbable
tree at the Grove; at length, one of the pair was shot by a local
bird-stuffer, after which the surviving bird twice found and returned
with a new mate; but one by one all were killed by the same miscreant.
[Illustration: THE LAST RAVEN]
It would be easy enough for any person to purchase a few magpies in the
market and liberate them in St. James's and Regent's Parks, and other
suitable places, where, if undisturbed, they would certainly breed; but
I fear that it would not be an advisable thing to do at present, on
account of the very strong prejudice which exists against this handsome
bird. Thus, at St. James's Park the one surviving bird is 'one too
many,' according to the keepers. 'One for sorrow' is an old saying.
He is, they say, a robber and a teaser, dangerous to the ornamental
water-fowl in the breeding season, a great persecutor of the
wood-pigeons, and in summer never happy unless he has a pigeon's egg
in his beak. It strikes one forcibly that this is not a faithful
portrait--that the magpie has been painted all black, instead of black
and white as nature made him. At all events, we know that during the
first two or three decades of the present century there was an abundant
and varied wild bird life in the royal parks, and that at the same time
the magpies were more numerous there than they are now known to be in
any forest or wild place in England.
The jay does not inhabit any of the inner parks and open spaces; nor
is there any evidence of its having been a resident London species at
any time. But it is found in the most rural parts and in the wooded
outskirts of the metropolis. Its haunts will be mentioned in the
chapters descriptive of the parks and open spaces.
There is no strong prejudice against the jay among the park keepers, and
I am glad to know that, in two or three parks, attempts will be made
shortly to introduce this most beautiful of British birds. It is to be
hoped that when we have got him his occasional small peccadilloes will
not be made too much of.
* * * * *
The raven has long been lost to London, but not so long as might be
imagined when we consider how nearly extinct this noble species, as an
inland breeder, now is in all the southern half, and very nearly all
the northern half, of England. It is not my intention in this book
to go much into the past history of London bird life, but I make an
exception of the raven on account of an extreme partiality for that most
human-like of feathered creatures. Down to about the middle of last
century, perhaps later, the raven was a common London bird. He was,
after the kite had vanished, the principal feathered scavenger, and
it was said that a London raven could easily be distinguished from a
country bird by his dulled or dusty-looking plumage, the result of his
food-seeking operations in dust and ash heaps. A little way out of the
metropolis he lingered on, as a breeding species, down to within a
little more than half a century ago; the last pair, so far as I can
discover, bred at Enfield down to about 1845. The original 'raven
tree' on which this pair had nested for many years was cut down, after
which the birds built a nest in a clump of seven elm-trees, known
locally as the 'seven sisters,' five of which are still standing.
[Illustration: 'THE SEVEN SISTERS']
In London the last pair had ceased to breed about twenty years earlier;
and of a hundred histories of 'last ravens' to be met with in all parts
of the country, that of these London birds is by no means the least
interesting, and is worth relating again.
Down to about 1826 this pair bred annually on one of the large elms in
Hyde Park, until it entered into the head of one of the park keepers
to pull down the nest containing young birds. The name and subsequent
history of this injurious wretch have not been handed down. Doubtless he
has long gone to his account; and let us add the pious wish that his
soul, along with the souls of all those who were wanton destroyers
of man's feathered fellow-creatures, is now being driven, like a
snow-flake, round and round the icy pole in that everlasting whirlwind
described by Courthope in his 'Paradise of Birds.'
The old ravens, deprived of their young, forsook the park. One of the
young birds was successfully reared by the keeper; and the story of
this raven was long afterwards related by Jesse. He was allowed the
fullest liberty, and as he passed a good deal of his time in the
vicinity of the Row, he came to be very well known to all those who were
accustomed to walk in Hyde Park at that time. He was fond of the society
of the men then engaged in the construction of Rennie's bridge over the
Serpentine, and the workmen made a pet of him. His favourite amusement
was to sidle cunningly up to some passer-by or idler, and, watching his
chance, give him or her a sharp dig on the ankle with his beak. One day
a fashionably dressed lady was walking near the bridge, when all at
once catching sight of the bird at her feet, on feeling its sharp beak
prodding her heel, she screamed and gave a great start, and in starting
dropped a valuable gold bracelet from her wrist. No sooner did the jewel
touch the ground than the raven snatched it up in his beak and flew away
with it into Kensington Gardens, where it was searched for, but never
found. It was believed that he made use of one of the hollow trees in
the gardens as a hiding place for plunder of this kind. At length the
raven disappeared--some one had stolen him; but after an absence
of several weeks he reappeared in the park with clipped wings. His
disposition, too, had suffered a change: he moped a good deal, and
finally one morning was found dead in the Serpentine. It was surmised
that he had drowned himself from grief at having been deprived of the
power of flight.
A few ravens have since visited London. In 1850 a keeper in Regent's
Park observed two of these birds engaged in a savage fight, which ended
in the death of one of the combatants.
In March 1890 a solitary raven appeared in Kensington Gardens, and
remained there for several weeks. A keeper informed me that it was
captured and taken away. If this unfortunate raven had known his London
better, he would not have chosen a royal park for a residence.
Was this Kensington raven, it has been asked, a wild bird, or a strayed
pet, or an escaped captive? I believe the following incident will throw
some light on the question.
For many years past two or three ravens have usually been kept at the
Tower of London. About seven years ago, as near as I can make out,
there were two birds, male and female, and they paired and set to work
building a nest on a tree. By and by, for some unknown reason, they
demolished the nest they had made and started building a new one in
another place. This nest also failed to satisfy them and was pulled to
pieces like the first, and another begun; and finally, after half a
dozen such attempts, the cock bird, who was a strong flyer, abandoned
the task altogether and took to roaming about London, possibly in search
of a new mate with a better knowledge of nest-building. It was his habit
to mount up to a considerable height in the air, and soar about above
the Tower, then to fly away to St. Paul's Cathedral, where he would
perch on the cross above the dome and survey the raree-show beneath.
Then he would wing his way to the docks, or in some other direction; and
day by day his wanderings over London were extended, until the owner or
owners of the bird were warned that if his wings were not clipped he
would, soon or late, be lost.
But when it was at last resolved to cut his wings he refused to be
caught. He had grown shy and suspicious, and although he came for food
and to roost on one of the turrets every evening, he would not allow any
person to come too near him. After some weeks of this semi-independent
life he finally disappeared, having, as I believe, met his end in
Kensington Gardens.
His old mate 'Jenny,' as she is named, still lives at the Tower. I hear
she has just been provided with a new mate.
* * * * *
Three other crows remain--the carrion crow, rook, and jackdaw, all
black but comely, although not beautiful nor elegant, like the bright
vari-coloured jay and the black and white pie. Unfortunately they are a
small remnant, and we are threatened with the near loss of one, if not
of all. The first-named of this corvine trio is now the largest and most
important wild bird that has been left to us; if any as big or bigger
appear, they are but casual visitors--a chance cormorant in severe
weather, and the heron, that sometimes comes by night to the ornamental
waters in the parks in search of fish, to vanish again, grey and
ghostlike in the grey dawn.
It is curious to find that the big, loud-voiced, hated carrion crow--so
conspicuous and aggressive a bird--has a firmer hold on life in the
metropolis than his two relations, the rook and daw; for these two are
sociable in habits and inclined to be domestic, and are everywhere
inhabitants of towns. Or, rather, it would be strange but for the fact
that the crow is less generally disliked in London than out of it.
Now, although these our three surviving crows are being left far
behind in actual numbers by some other species that have only recently
established themselves among us, and are moreover decreasing, and may be
wholly lost at no distant date, they have been so long connected
with London, and historically, as well as on account of their high
intelligence and interesting habits, are so much more to us than the
birds of other families, that I am tempted to write at considerable
length about them, devoting a separate chapter to each species. I also
cherish the hope that their threatened loss may yet be prevented;
doubtless every Londoner will agree that it would be indeed a pity to
lose these old residents.
It is a fact, although perhaps not a quite familiar one, that those who
reside in the metropolis are more interested in and have a kindlier
feeling for their wild birds than is the case in the rural districts.
The reason is not far to seek: the poorer we are the more do we prize
our small belongings. A wind-fluttered green leaf, a sweet-smelling red
rose, a thrush in song, is naturally more to a Londoner than to the
dweller in mid-Surrey, or Kent, or Devon.
CHAPTER III
THE CARRION CROW IN THE BALANCE
The crow in London--Persecuted in the royal parks--Degradation
of Hyde Park--Ducks in the Serpentine: how they are
thinned--Shooting a chicken with a revolver--Habits of the Hyde
Park mallard--Anecdotes--Number of London crows--The crow a
long-lived bird; a bread-eater--Anecdote--Seeks its food on the
river--The crow as a pet--Anecdotes.
The carrion crow has probably always been an inhabitant of the central
parks; at all events it is well known that for a long time past a pair
bred annually in the trees on the north side of the Serpentine, down to
within the last three years. As these birds took toll of the ducks' eggs
and ducklings when they had a nest full of ravenous young to feed, it
was resolved that they should no longer be tolerated; their nests were
ordered to be pulled down and the old birds shot whenever an opportunity
offered. Now it is not the Hyde Park crows alone that will suffer if
this policy be adhered to, but the London crows generally will be in
danger of extermination, for the birds are constantly passing and
repassing across London, visiting all the parks where there are large
trees, on their way to and from their various feeding-grounds. Hyde Park
with Kensington Gardens is one of their favourite stopping places; one
or more pairs may be seen there on most mornings, frequently at noon
again on their return to Richmond, Kew, and Syon Park, and to the
northern heights of London. On the morning of October 10, 1896, I saw
eight carrion crows, in pairs, perched at a considerable distance apart
on the elm-tops near the palace in Kensington Gardens. After calling for
some time on the trees, they began to pursue and buffet one another with
violence, making the whole place in the meantime resound with their
powerful, harsh, grating cries. Their mock battle over, they rose to a
considerable height in the air and went away towards Hammersmith. It
seemed to me a marvellous thing that I had witnessed such a scene in
such a place. But it is not necessary to see a number of carrion crows
together to feel impressed with the appearance of the bird. There are
few finer sights in the wild bird life of London than one of these
visitors to the park on any autumn or winter morning, when he will allow
you to come quite near to the leafless tree on which he is perched, to
stand still and admire his massive raven-like beak and intense black
plumage glossed with metallic green, as he sits flirting his wings and
tail, swelling his throat to the size of a duck's egg, as, at intervals,
he pours out a succession of raucous caws--the cry of a true savage, and
the crow's 'voice of care,' as Chaucer called it.
[Illustration: CARRION CROW'S NEST]
The crow is, in fact, the grandest wild bird left to us in the
metropolis; and after corresponding and conversing with a large number
of persons on the subject, I find that in London others--most persons,
I believe--admire him as much as I do, and are just as anxious that he
should be preserved. It may be mentioned here that in two or three of
the County Council's parks the superintendents protect and take pride in
their crows. Why, then, should these few birds, which Londoners value,
be destroyed in the royal parks for fear of the loss of a few ducklings
out of the hundreds that are annually hatched and reared?
The ducks in the Serpentine are very numerous; many bucketfuls of
food--meal and grain--are given to them every day when they congregate
at the boat-house, and they get besides large quantities of broken bread
cast to them by the public; all day long, and every day when it is not
raining, there is a continual procession of men, women, and children
bringing food for the birds. Is it permissible to ask for whose
advantage this large number of ducks is reared and fattened for the
table at so small a cost? Hyde Park is maintained by the nation, and
presumably for the nation; it is a national as well as a royal park; is
it not extraordinary that so noble a possession, the largest and most
beautiful open space in the capital of the British empire, the chief
city of the world, should be degraded to something like a poultry farm,
or at all events a duck-breeding establishment, and that in order to get
as much profit as possible out of the ducks, one of the chief ornaments
of the park, the one representative of noble wild bird life that has
survived until now in London, should be sacrificed?
Let us by all means have ducks, and many of them; they are gregarious by
nature and look well in flocks, and are a source of innocent pleasure
to numberless visitors to the parks, especially to children and
nursemaids; but let us not have ducks only--a great multitude of ducks,
to the exclusion of other wilder and nobler birds.
Personally, I am very fond of these ducks, although I have never had
one on my table, and believe that I am as well able to appreciate their
beauty and feel an interest in their habits as any of the gentlemen in
authority who have decreed that the carrion crow shall go the way of the
raven in Hyde Park. I love them because they are not the ducks that have
been made lazy and fat, with all their fine faculties dulled, by long
domestication. They are the wild duck, or mallard, introduced many
years ago into the Serpentine. Doubtless they have some domestic taint
in them, since the young birds reared each season exhibit a very
considerable variation in colour and markings. Those that vary in
colour are weeded out each winter, and the original type is in this way
preserved; but not strictly preserved, as the weeding-out process is
carelessly--I had almost said stupidly--performed.
The thinning takes place in December, and at that season people who
live in the vicinity of the park are startled each morning by the sound
of firing, as at the covert side. The sub-ranger and his friends and
underlings are enjoying their big annual shoot. And there is no reason
why they should not have this sport, if it pleases them, and if by this
means the object sought could be obtained. But it is not obtained, as
anyone may see for himself; and it also seems a trifle ridiculous that
any man can find sport in shooting birds accustomed to walk about among
people's legs and feed out of little children's hands.
Once upon a time, in a distant country, I came with a companion to a
small farmhouse. We were very much in want of a meal, but no person was
about, and the larder was empty, and so we determined to kill and broil
a chicken for ourselves. On our making certain chuckling noises, which
domestic birds understand, a number of fowls scattered about near the
place rushed up to us, expecting to be fed. We made choice of a very
tall cockerel for our breakfast; so tall was this young bird on his
long, bright yellow stilt-like shanks that he towered head and neck
above his fellows. My companion, who was an American, had a revolver
in his pocket, and pulling it out he fired five shots at the bird at a
distance of about six yards, but failed to hit it. He was preparing to
reload his weapon, when, to expedite matters, I picked up a stick and
knocked the chicken over, and in less than fifty minutes' time we were
picking his bones.
I doubt if the Hyde Park sportsmen will see anything very amusing in
this story.
The mallard is an extremely handsome fowl, and it is pleasant to see
such a bird in flocks, at home on the ornamental waters, and at the same
time to learn that it is, in a sense, a wild bird, that in the keenness
of its faculties, its power of flight, and nesting habits it differs
greatly from its degenerate domestic relation. By day he will feed from
any person's hand; in the evening he returns to his ancient wary habit,
and will not suffer a person to approach him. He is active by night,
particularly in the autumn, flying about the park and gardens in
small flocks and feeding on the grass. It is a curious and delightful
experience to be alone on a damp autumn night in Kensington Gardens. One
is surrounded by London; its dull continuous murmur may be heard, and
the glinting of distant lamps catches the eye through the trees; these
fitful gleams and distant sounds but make the silence and darkness all
the more deep and impressive. Suddenly the whistling of wings is heard,
and the loud startled cry of a mallard, as the birds, vaguely seen,
rush by overhead; the effect on the mind is wonderful--one has been
transported as by a miracle into the midst of a wild and solitary
nature.
Both by day and night there is much going to and fro between the
Serpentine and the Round Pond, but each bird appears to be faithful to
its _home_, and those that have been reared on the Round Pond breed
in its vicinity on the west side of the gardens. Where their eggs are
deposited is known to few. Strange as it may seem, they nest in the
trees, in holes in the trunks of the large elms, in many cases
at a height of thirty feet or more from the ground. Some of the
breeding-trees are known, of others the secret has been well kept by the
birds. Not a few ducks breed in Holland Park, and find it an exceedingly
difficult matter to get their broods into the gardens. More than once
the strange spectacle of a duck leading its newly-hatched young along
the thronged pavements of Kensington High Street has been witnessed.
When the young have been hatched in a tree the parent bird takes them up
in her beak and drops them one by one to the ground, and the fall does
not appear to hurt them. Last year a duck bred in a tree broken off at
the top near St. Gover's Well, in the gardens. One morning she appeared
with four ducklings, and leaving them near the pond went back to the
tree and in time returned with a second lot of four. Still she was not
satisfied, but continued to go back to the tree and to fly round and
round it with a great clamour. A keeper who had been watching her
movements sent for a man with a ladder to have the tree-top examined.
The man found the broken stem hollow at the top, and by thrusting his
arm down shoulder-deep was able to reach the bottom of the cavity with
his hand. One duckling was found in it and rescued, and its mother made
happy. That she had succeeded in getting all the others out of so deep
and narrow a shaft seemed very astonishing.
An extraordinary incident relating to these Kensington ducks was told
to me by one of the keepers, who himself heard it by a very curious
chance. One dark evening, after leaving the gardens, he got on to an
omnibus near the Albert Hall to go to his home at Hammersmith. Two men
who occupied the seat in front of him were talking about the gardens
and the birds, and he listened. One of the men related that he once
succeeded in taking a clutch of ducks' eggs from the gardens. He put
them under a hen at his home in Hammersmith, and nine ducklings were
hatched. They were healthy and strong and grew up into nine as fine
ducks as he had ever seen. Such fine birds were they that he was loth
to kill or part with them, and before he had made up his mind what to
do he lost them in a very strange way. One morning he was in his back
yard, where his birds were kept, when a crow appeared flying by at a
considerable height in the air; instantly the ducks, with raised heads,
ran together, then with a scream of terror sprang into the air and flew
away, to be seen no more. Up till that moment they had never seen beyond
the small back yard where they lived--it was their world--nor had any
one of them ever attempted to use his wings.
Let us now return to the nobler bird, the subject of this chapter.
It would not, I imagine, be difficult for one who had the time to count
the London crows; those I am accustomed to see number about twenty, and
I should not be surprised to learn that as many as forty crows frequent
inner London. But with the exception of two, or perhaps three pairs,
they do not now breed in London, but have their nesting-haunts in woods
west, north, and east of the metropolis. These breeders on the outskirts
bring the young they succeed in rearing to the parks, from which they
have themselves in some cases been expelled, and the tradition is thus
kept up. Most of the birds appear to fly over London every day, paying
long visits on their way to Regent's Park, Holland Park, the central
parks, and Battersea Park. As their movements are very regular it would
be possible to mark their various routes on a map of the metropolis.
Mr. W. H. Tuck, writing to me about the carrion crow, says: 'For many
years, when living in Kensington, several pairs of crows going from N.E.
to S.W. passed at daybreak over my house on their way to the Thames
banks at Chelsea, and I could always time them within a minute or two.'
These birds come on their way from the northern heights to the river
at Chelsea; the crows that breed in the neighbourhood of Syon Park and
Richmond fly over the central parks to Westminster, and then follow the
river down to its mouth.
The persistency with which the carrion crow keeps to his nesting-place
may be seen in the case of a pair that have bred in private grounds at
Hillfield, Hampstead, for at least sixty years. Nor is it impossible to
believe that the same birds have occupied the site for this long period,
the crow being a long-lived creature. The venerable author of 'Festus,'
who also has the secret of long life, might have been thinking of this
very pair when, more than half a century ago, he wrote his spirited
lyric:--
The crow! the crow! the great black crow!
He lives for a hundred years and mo';
He lives till he dies, and he dies as slow
As the morning mists down the hill that go.
Go--go! you great black crow!
But it's fine to live and die like a great black crow.
Many persons might be inclined to think that it must be better for the
crow to have his nest a little way out of the hurly-burly, or at all
events within easy reach of the country; for how, they might ask, can
this large flesh-eating, voracious creature feed himself and rear a nest
full of young with cormorant appetites in London?
Eliza Cook, whose now universally neglected works I admired as a boy,
makes the bird say, in her 'Song of the Crow':--
I plunged my beak in the marbling cheek,
I perched on the clammy brow;
And a dainty treat was that fresh meat
To the greedy carrion crow.
The unknown author of 'The Twa Corbies' was a better naturalist as well
as a better poet when he wrote--
I'll pick out his bonny blue een.
But this relates to a time when the bodies of dead men, as well as of
other large animals, were left lying promiscuously about; in these
ultra-civilised days, when all dead things are quickly and decently
interred, the greedy carrion crow has greatly modified his feeding
habits. In London, as in most places, he takes whatever he finds on the
table, and though not in principle a vegetarian, there is no doubt that
he feeds largely on vegetable substances. Like the sparrow and other
London birds, he has become with us a great bread-eater.
Mr. Kempshall, the superintendent at Clissold Park, relates a curious
story of this civilised taste in the crow. The park for very many years
was the home of a pair of these birds. Unfortunately, when this space
was opened to the public, in 1889, the birds forsook it, and settled in
some large trees on private grounds in the neighbourhood. These trees
were cut down about three years ago, whereupon the birds returned to
Clissold Park; but they have now again left it. One summer morning
before the park was opened, when there were young crows in the nest,
Mr. Kempshall observed one of the old birds laboriously making his
way across the open ground towards the nesting-tree, laden with a
strange-looking object. This was white and round and three times as big
as an orange, and the crow, flying close to the ground, was obliged to
alight at short intervals, whereupon he would drop his pack and take a
rest. Curious to know what he was carrying, the superintendent made a
sudden rush at the bird, at a moment when he had set his burden down,
and succeeded in getting near enough to see that the white object was
the round top part of a cottage loaf. But though the rush had been
sudden and unexpected, and accompanied with a startling shout, the crow
did not lose his head; striking his powerful beak, or _plunging_ it, as
Eliza Cook would have said, into the mass, he flopped up and struggled
resolutely on until he reached the nest, to be boisterously welcomed by
his hungry family. They had a big meal, but perhaps grumbled a little at
so much bread without any ghee.
Probably the London crows get most of their food from the river. Very
early every morning, as we have seen, they wing their way to the Thames,
and at all hours of the day, when not engaged in breeding, crows may be
seen travelling up and down the river, usually in couples, from Barnes
and Mortlake and higher up, down to the sea. They search the mud at low
tide for dead fishes, garbage, bread, and vegetable matter left by the
water. Even when the tide is at its full the birds are still able to
pick up something to eat, as they have borrowed the gull's habit of
dropping upon the water to pick up any floating object which may form
part of their exceedingly varied dietary. It is amusing to see the
carrion crow fishing up his dinner in this way, for he does not venture
to fold his wings like the gull and examine and take up the morsel at
leisure; he drops upon the water rather awkwardly, wetting his legs and
belly, but keeps working his wings until he has secured the floating
object, then rises heavily with it in his beak. Another curious habit of
some London crows in the south-west district, is to alight, dove-like,
on the roofs and chimney-stacks of tall houses.
In an article on this bird which appeared in the 'Fortnightly Review'
for May 1895, I wrote: 'It sometimes greatly adds to our knowledge of
any wild creature to see it tamed--not confined in any way, nor with its
wings clipped, but free to exercise all its faculties and to come and go
at will. Some species in this condition are very much more companionable
than others, and probably none so readily fall into the domestic life as
the various members of the crow family; for they are more intelligent
and adaptive, and nearer to the mammalians in their mental character
than most birds. It is therefore curious to find that the subject of
this paper appears to be little known as a domestic bird, or pet. A
caged crow, being next door, so to speak, to a dead and stuffed crow,
does not interest me. Yet the crow strikes one as a bird with great
possibilities as a pet: one would like to observe him freely associating
with the larger unfeathered crows that have a different language, to
learn by what means he communicates with them, to sound his depths of
amusing devilry, and note the modulations of his voice; for he, too,
like other corvines, is loquacious on occasions, and much given to
soliloquy. He is also a musician, a fact which is referred to by Æsop,
Yarrell, and other authorities, but they have given us no proper
description of his song. A friend tells me that he once kept a crow
which did not prove a very interesting pet. This was not strange in the
circumstances. The bird was an old one, just knocked down with a charge
of shot, when he was handed over in a dazed condition to my informant.
He recovered from his wounds, but was always a very sedate bird. He
had the run of a big old country house, and was one day observed in a
crouching attitude pressed tightly into the angle formed by the wall
and floor. He had discovered that the place was infested by mice, and
was watching a crevice. The instant that a mouse put out a head the crow
had him in his beak, and would kill him by striking him with lightning
rapidity two or three times on the floor, then swallow him. From that
time mouse-catching was this bird's sole occupation and amusement, and
he went about the house in the silent and stealthy manner of a cat.
'I am anxious to get the history of a tame crow that never had his
wing-feathers clipped, and did not begin the domestic life as an old
bird with several pellets of lead in his body.'
Curiously enough, not long after this article appeared another
bird-lover in London was asking the same question in another journal.
This was Mr. Mandeville B. Phillips, of South Norwood, then private
secretary to the late Archbishop of Canterbury. By accident he had
become possessed of a carrion crow, sold to him as a young raven taken
from a nest at Ely. This bird made so interesting a pet that its owner
became desirous of hearing the experiences of others who had kept
carrion crows. Mr. Phillips, in kindly giving me the history of his
bird, says that at different times he has kept ravens, daws, jays, and
magpies, but has never had so delightful a bird friend as the crow. It
was a revelation to him to find what an interesting pet this species
made. No other bird he had owned approached him in cleverness and in
multiplicity of tricks and devices: he could give the cleverest jackdaw
points and win easily. If his bird was an average specimen of the race,
he wondered that the crow is not more popular as a pet. This bird was
fond of his liberty, but would always come to his master when called,
and roosted every night in an outhouse. Like the tame raven, and also
like human beings of a primitive order of mind, he was excessively fond
of practical jokes, and whenever he found the dog or cat asleep he would
steal quietly up and administer a severe prod on the tail with his
powerful beak. He would also fly into the kitchen when he saw the
window open, to steal the spoons; but his chief delight was in a box
of matches, which he would carry off to pick to pieces and scatter the
matches all over the place. He was extremely jealous of a tame raven and
a jackdaw that shared the house and garden with him, and which he chose
to regard as rivals; but this was his only unhappiness. The appearance
of his master dressed in 'blazers' always greatly affected him. It
would, indeed, throw him into such a frenzy of terror that Mr. Phillips
became careful not to exhibit himself in such bizarre raiment in the
garden. My informant concludes, that he is not ashamed to say that he
shed a few tears at the loss of this bird.
I may add that I received a large number of letters in answer to my
article on the carrion crow, but none of my correspondents in this
country had any knowledge of the bird as a pet. In several letters
received from America--the States and Canada--long histories of the
common crow of that region as a pet bird were sent to me.
CHAPTER IV
THE LONDON DAW
Rarity of the daw in London--Pigeons and daws compared--Æsthetic
value of the daw as a cathedral bird--Kensington Palace daws;
their disposition and habits--Friendship with rooks--Wandering
daws at Clissold Park--Solitary daws--Mr. Mark Melford's
birds--Rescue of a hundred daws--The strange history of an
egg-stealing daw--White daws--White ravens--Willughby's
speculations--A suggestion.
It is somewhat curious to find that the jackdaw is an extremely rare
bird in London--that, in fact, with the exception of a small colony at
one spot, he is almost non-existent. At Richmond Park, where pheasants
(and the gamekeeper's traditions) are preserved, he was sometimes shot
in the breeding season; but in the metropolis, so far as I know, he has
never been persecuted. Yet there are few birds, certainly no member of
the crow family, seemingly so well adapted to a London life as this
species. Throughout the kingdom he is a familiar town bird; in one
English cathedral over a hundred pairs have their nests; and in that
city and in many other towns the birds are accustomed to come to the
gardens and window-sills, to be fed on scraps by their human neighbours
and friends.
[Illustration: PIGEONS AT THE LAW COURTS]
While the daw has diminished with us, and is near to vanishing, the
common pigeon--the domestic variety of the blue rock--has increased
excessively in recent years. Large colonies of these birds inhabit the
Temple Gardens, the Law Courts, St. Paul's, the Museum, and Westminster
Palace, and many smaller settlements exist all over the metropolis. Now,
a flock or cloud of parti-coloured pigeons rushing up and wheeling about
the roofs or fronts of these imposing structures forms a very pretty
sight; but the daw toying with the wind, that lifts and blows him hither
and thither, is a much more engaging spectacle, and in London we miss
him greatly.
I have often thought that it was due to the presence of the daw that I
was ever able to get an adequate or satisfactory idea of the beauty
and grandeur of some of our finest buildings. Watching the bird in his
aërial evolutions, now suspended motionless, or rising and falling, then
with half-closed wings precipitating himself downwards, as if demented,
through vast distances, only to mount again with an exulting cry, to
soar beyond the highest tower or pinnacle, and seem at that vast height
no bigger than a swift in size--watching him thus, an image of the
structure over and around which he disported himself so gloriously has
been formed--its vastness, stability, and perfect proportions--and has
remained thereafter a vivid picture in my mind. How much would be lost
to the sculptured west front of Wells Cathedral, the soaring spire of
Salisbury, the noble roof and towers of York Minster and of Canterbury,
if the jackdaws were not there! I know that, compared with the images
I retain of many daw-haunted cathedrals and castles in the provinces,
those of the cathedrals and other great buildings in London have in my
mind a somewhat dim and blurred appearance. It is a pity that, before
consenting to rebuild St. Paul's Cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren did not
make the perpetual maintenance of a colony of jackdaws a condition.
And if he had bargained with posterity for a pair or two of peregrine
falcons and kestrels, his glory at the present time would have been
greater.
There are, I believe, about sixteen hundred churches in London; probably
not more than three are now tenanted by the 'ecclesiastical daw.'
On the borders of London--at Hampstead, Greenwich, Dulwich, Richmond,
and other points--daws in limited numbers are to be met with; in London
proper, or inner London, there are no resident or breeding daws except
the small colony of about twenty-four birds at Kensington Palace. Most
of these breed in the hollow elms in Kensington Gardens; others in trees
in Holland Park. There is something curious about this small isolated
colony: the birds are far less loquacious and more sedate in manner than
daws are wont to be. At almost any hour of the day they may be seen
sitting quietly on the higher branches of the tall trees, silent and
spiritless. The wind blows, and they rise not to play with it; the
graceful spire of St. Mary Abbott's springs high above the garden trees
and palace and neighbouring buildings, but it does not attract them.
Occasionally, in winter, when the morning sun shines bright and melts
the mist, they experience a sudden return of the old frolicsome mood,
and at such moments are capable of a very fine display, rushing over
and among the tall elms in a black train, yelping like a pack of aërial
hounds in hot pursuit of some invisible quarry.
A still greater excitement is exhibited by these somewhat depressed and
sedentary Kensington birds on the appearance of a flight of rooks; for
rooks, sometimes in considerable numbers, do occasionally visit or pass
over London, and keep, when travelling east or west, to the wide green
way of the central parks. Now there are few more impressive spectacles
in bird life in this country than the approach of a large company of
rooks; their black forms, that loom so large as they successively
appear, follow each other with slow deliberate motion at long intervals,
moving as in a funeral procession, with appropriate solemn noises, which
may be heard when they are still at a great distance. They are chanting
something that corresponds in the corvine world to our Dead March
in 'Saul.' The coming sound has a magical effect on the daws; their
answering cries ring out loud and sharp, and hurriedly mounting to a
considerable height in the air, they go out to meet the processionists,
to mix with and accompany them a distance on the journey. It is to me a
wonderful sight--more wonderful here in Kensington Gardens, which have
long been rookless, than in any country place, and has reminded me of
the meeting of two savage tribes or families, living far apart but
cherishing an ancient tradition of kinship and amity, who, after a long
interval, perhaps of years, when at last they come in sight of each
other's faces rush together, bursting into loud shouts of greeting and
welcome. And one is really inclined to believe at times that some such
traditional alliance and feeling of friendship exists between these two
most social and human-like of the crow family.
Besides this small remnant of birds native to London, flocks of jackdaws
from outside occasionally appear when migrating or in search of new
quarters. One morning, not long ago, a flock of fifteen came down at
Clissold Park. They settled on the dovecote, and amused themselves in
a characteristic way by hunting the pigeons out of their boxes; then,
having cleared the place, they remained contentedly for an hour or
two, dozing, preening their feathers, and conversing together in low
tones. The bird-loving superintendent's heart was filled with joy
at the acquisition of so interesting a colony; but his rejoicing
was premature, the loud call and invitation to fly was at last
sounded, and hastily responded to--_We have not come to stay--we
are off--good-bye--so-long--farewell_--and forthwith they rose up and
flew away, probably in search of fresher woods and less trodden
pastures than those of Clissold Park.
There are also to be met with in London a few solitary vagrant daws
which in most cases are probably birds escaped from captivity. Close to
my home a daw of this description appears every morning at the house of
a friend and demands his breakfast with loud taps on the window-pane.
The generous treatment he has received has caused him to abandon his
first suspicious attitude; he now flies boldly into the house and
explores the rooms, and is specially interested in the objects on the
dressing-table. Articles of jewellery are carefully put out of sight
when he makes a call.
My friends, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Melford, of Fulham, are probably
responsible for the existence in London of a good number of wandering
solitary jackdaws. They cherish a wonderful admiration and affection
towards all the members of the crow family, and have had numberless
daws, jays, and pies as pets, or rather as guests, since their birds
are always free to fly about the house and go and come at pleasure.
But their special favourite is the daw, which they regard as far more
intelligent, interesting, and companionable than any other animal, not
excepting the dog. On one occasion Mr. Melford saw an advertisement of
a hundred daws to be sold for trap-shooting, and to save them from so
miserable a fate he at once purchased the lot and took them home. They
were in a miserable half-starved condition, and to give them a better
chance of survival, before freeing them he placed them in an outhouse in
his garden with a wire-netting across the doorway, and there he fed and
tended them until they were well and strong, and then gave them their
liberty. But they did not at once take advantage of it; grown used to
the place and the kindly faces of their protectors, they remained and
were like tame birds about the house; but later, a few at a time, at
long intervals, they went away and back to their wild independent life.
Of the many stories of their pet daws which they have told me, I will
give one of a bird which was a particular favourite of Mrs. Melford's.
His invariable habit was, on returning from an expedition abroad, to fly
straight into the house in search of her, and, sitting on her head, to
express his affection and delight at rejoining her by passing his beak
through her hair.
[Illustration: THE LADY AND THE DAW]
Unfortunately, this bird had a weakness for eggs, which led him into
many scrapes, and in the end very nearly proved his undoing. He was
constantly hanging about and prying into the fowl-house, and whenever
he felt sure that he was not observed he would slip in to purloin an
egg. His cunning reacted on the fowls and made them cunning too. When he
appeared they looked the other way, or walked off 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 recover his 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 gay
As on yesterday;
His feathers all seemed to be turned the wrong way;
His pinions drooped, he could hardly stand,
His head was as bald as the palm of your hand;
His eye so dim,
So wasted each limb,
That, heedless of grammar, they all cried 'That's him!'
By-and-by, when still in this broken-hearted and broken-feathered state,
a sight to make his mistress weep, he disappeared; it was 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 lying on 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 a mystery 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 white or 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, as _Bears_,
_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, occasioning such 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 would come 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.
CHAPTER V
EXPULSION OF THE ROOKS
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.
We have seen how it is with the carrion crow--that he is in the balance,
and that if the park authorities will but refrain from persecuting him
he will probably be able to keep his ancient place among the wild birds
of London. To what has already been said on the subject of this bird I
will only add here that there is, just now, an unfortunate inclination
in some of the County Council's parks to adopt the policy of the 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 produce the 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.
[Illustration: 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
they will thrive and increase, and, in any case, that if we want the
daw we can have him. But the case of the rook appears to me well nigh
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 ignorant person 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 obliged to 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 social habits, 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 fly about once
more; but he elected to stay with his benefactress, although he always
spent a portion of each day in flying about the country in company with
his fellows. He had various ways of showing his partiality for his
mistress, one of which was 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 as bad 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 to be 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
going east or west. After rambling about for some three or four hours,
I came to a vast wooded place where few persons were about. It was a
wet, cold morning in early May, after a night of incessant rain; but
when I reached this unknown place the sun shone out and made the air
warm and fragrant and the grass and trees sparkle with innumerable
raindrops. Never grass and trees in their early spring foliage looked
so vividly green, while above the sky was clear and blue as if I had
left London leagues behind. As I advanced farther into this wooded space
the dull sounds of traffic 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
so far known to me, including the turbid, rushing Thames, spanned by
its vast stone bridges, the cathedral with its sombre cloud-like dome,
and the endless hurrying procession of Cheapside, this impressed me the
most. The existence of so noble a transcript of wild nature as this tall
wood with its noisy black people, 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. _Why_ was it destroyed? It was surely worth
more to us than many of our possessions--many painted canvases, statues,
and monuments, which have cost millions of the public money! Of brick
and stone buildings, plain and ornamental, we have enough to afford
shelter to our bodies, and for all other purposes, but trees of one or
two centuries' growth, the great trees that give shelter and refreshment
to the soul, are not many in London. There must, then, have been some
urgent reason and necessity for the removal of this temple not builded
by man. It could not surely have been for the sake of the paltry sum
which the wood was worth--paltry, that is to say, if we compare the
amount the timber-merchant would pay for seven hundred elm-trees with
the sum of seventy-five thousand pounds the Government gave, a little
later, for half a dozen dreary canvases from Blenheim--dust and ashes
for the hungry and thirsty! Those who witnessed the felling of these
seven hundred trees, the tallest in London, could but believe that the
authorities had good cause for what they did, that they had been advised
by experts in forestry; and it was vaguely thought that the trees, which
looked outwardly in so flourishing a condition, were inwardly eaten up
with canker, and would eventually (and very soon perhaps) have to come
down. If 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 could walk 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 the finest 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 vast majority 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 peculiar sweetness, 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,
the other 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 branches of 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 a vision
of some far time, after this London, after the dust of all her people,
from park ranger to bowed-down withered old woman gathering rotten
rain-sodden sticks for fuel, had been blown about by the winds of many
centuries--a vision of old trees growing again on this desecrated spot
as in past ages, oak and elm, and beech and chestnut, the 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.
CHAPTER VI
RECENT COLONISTS
The wood-pigeon in Kensington Gardens--Its increase--Its beauty and
charm--Perching on Shakespeare's statue in Leicester Square--Change
of habits--The moorhen--Its 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.
Of the 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 graceful curve 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, or with trees of a moderate
size, where these birds are not annual breeders. As the park trees no
longer afford them sufficient accommodation they have gone to other
smaller areas, and to many squares and gardens, private and public.
Thus, in 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, when disturbed, 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.
[Illustration: WOOD-PIGEON ON SHAKESPEARE'S STATUE]
So numerous are the wood-pigeons at the end 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 hen_ is its
scientific name. Its motions, too, are pretty and quaint. Not without
a smile can we see it going about on the smooth turf with an air of
dignity incongruous in so small a bird, lifting up and setting down its
feet with all the deliberation of a crane or bustard. A hundred curious
facts have been recorded of this familiar species--the 'moat-hen' of old
troubled days when the fighting man, instead of the schoolmaster as now,
was abroad in England, and manor-houses were surrounded by moats, in
which the moorhen lived, close to human 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 some friend had related such a thing to me I should
have been disposed to think that his sight had deceived him. This
moorhen was quietly feeding on the margin, but became greatly excited
on the appearance, a little distance away, of a second bird. Lowering
its head, it made a little rush at, or towards, the new-comer, then
stopped and went quietly back; then made a second little charge, and
again walked back. Finally it began to walk _backwards_, with slow,
measured steps, towards the other bird, displaying, as it advanced, or
retrograded, its open white tail, at the same time glancing over its
shoulder as if to observe the effect on its neighbour of this new mode
of motion. Whether this demonstration meant anger, or love, or mere fun,
I cannot say.
Instances of what 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 a clergyman, 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 its nest 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 spring and 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 dense unwettable
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 weeds over 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.
[Illustration: 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 of this
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 seem almost 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 find good 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.
CHAPTER VII
LONDON'S LITTLE BIRDS
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.
There are not more than about twenty species of small passerine birds
that live all the year in London proper. The larger wild birds that
breed in London within the five-mile radius are eight species, or if we
add the semi-domestic pigeon or rock-dove, there are nine. Of the twenty
small birds, it is surprising to find that only five can 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 to have 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 that _my_
sparrows--a few dozen that breed and live under my eyes--never see the
country, nor any park, square, or other open space.
The 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 found that 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--a
bit of string, a chip of wood, a scrap of paper, white or blue or
yellow, or a rag, or even a penny piece, and at the first sight of it
away they will dart, and not return until the dangerous object has been
removed. A pigeon or starling would come and take the food without
paying 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 his London home he grew up to be a handsome bird,
brighter in plumage than our cock sparrows usually seem, even in the
West-end parks. He was strongly attached to his mistress, and liked
to play with and to be caressed by her; when she sat at work he
would perch 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. Once he 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, a married 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
on the 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 cockney
voice, 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.
[Illustration: 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 sparrow community.
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. Their chorus 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 return journey 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.
[Illustration: 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 musical conversation, 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 the starling, you cannot listen to one of
their choirs without hearing some new sound. There is more variety in
the starling than in any other species, and not only in his language;
if you 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 a nestful 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
interests of 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-killers are 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 much admired, until the end of March last year (1897), having
meanwhile found a mate, and was then killed by a cat.
* * * * *
The robin, although common as ever in all the more rural parts of
London--the 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 that this 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 a _better_ bird, in the sense of being gentler,
sweeter-tempered, more affectionate and _human_, than other feathered
creatures. But it is not so, the tender expression of his large dark eye
is deceptive. The late Mr. 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
end fatally to one of the combatants. The raven has the same savage
disposition and habit with regard to its young; and when a young raven,
in disposition a 'chip of the old block,' refuses to go when ordered,
and fights to stay, it occasionally happens that one of the birds gets
killed. But the raven has a tremendous weapon, a stone axe, in his
massive beak; how much greater the fury and bulldog tenacity of the
robin must be to kill one of his own kind with so feeble a weapon as
his small soft bill! At the end of the summer of 1896 two robins were
observed 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
suitable places were provided for them, the robins would increase year
by year from this natural cause.
There are other movements of robins in London which it will be more in
order to notice in the next chapter.
CHAPTER VIII
MOVEMENTS OF LONDON BIRDS
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.
The seasonal 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 vernal migration
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 they found 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 most abundant 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.
[Illustration: 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 out cold and wet, may be rewarded by hearing far-off shrill
delicate noises of straggling sandpipers or other shore birds on
passage, or the mysterious cry of the lapwing, 'wailing his way from
cloud to cloud.'
All these rare sights and sounds are for the very patient watchers
and listeners; 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 parent had 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.
[Illustration: 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 Palace grounds; 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 ordinary way. The pigeons would settle on a branch and
then begin moving cautiously towards the points, the branch bending
beneath the weight more and more until the bird, unable to keep any
longer _on_ the 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 the parks 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 together and
silent as if expecting something, and at intervals of a minute or two a
simultaneous cry would burst from them.
I have observed that on winter evenings 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 black with their thousands, and the noise of their singing and
chattering is so great that a person standing on the edge of the lake
can hardly hear himself speak. These meeting places are evidently
growing in favour, and if the autumn of 1898 shows as great an increase
as those of 1896 and 1897 over previous years, London will have as
compensation for its lost rookeries some very fine clouds of 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 good deal, and frequently appear in the most unlikely places.
Some of these are no doubt birds of the year hatched in London or the
suburbs, and others may be migrating robins passing 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 common thing 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 trying for 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 battalions and are little
remarked. They are to be found, a few here and a few there, all over
London, wherever there are trees and bushes, 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 corresponding excitement
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 to appear on the Thames, a body of two or
three hundred of these birds settled down in the park water, and fed
there every day and all day long until the following spring--March 1897.
A favourite pastime of mine during the winter months was to feed these
park gulls with sprats, which were plentiful and could be bought
anywhere for one penny a pound, or in quantities for about a farthing
the pound. Gulls cannot live by bread alone; it is true that even in
London they do not, like the blubber-eating Greenlander, spew it out of
their mouths, for they will eat almost anything, but it is not partaken
of 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.
[Illustration: FEEDING THE GULLS IN ST. JAMES'S PARK]
Some of the birds, bolder or more intelligent than their fellows,
would actually take the sprats from the hand.
A very few days before writing this chapter end, on January 30, 1898,
I passed by the water and saw the gulls there, where indeed they have
spent most of the daylight hours since the first week in October. It was
a rough wild morning; the hurrying masses of dark cloud cast a gloom
below that was like twilight; and though there was no mist the trees and
buildings surrounding the park appeared vague and distant. The water,
too, looked strange in its intense blackness, which was not hidden by
the silver-grey light on the surface, for the surface was everywhere
rent and broken by the wind, showing the blackness beneath. Some of the
gulls--about 150 I thought--were on the water together in a close flock,
tailing off to a point, all with their red beaks pointing one way to the
gale. Seeing them thus, sitting high as their manner is, tossed up and
down with the tumbling water, yet every bird keeping his place in the
company, their whiteness and buoyancy in that dark setting was quite
wonderful. It was a picture of black winter and beautiful wild bird life
which would have had a rare attraction even in the desert places of the
earth; in London it could not be witnessed without feelings of surprise
and gratitude.
We see in this punctual return of the gulls, bringing their young with
them, that a new habit has been acquired, a tradition formed, which has
given to London a new and exceedingly beautiful ornament, of more value
than many works of art.
CHAPTER IX
A SURVEY OF THE PARKS: WEST LONDON
A general survey of the metropolitan parks--West London--Central parks,
with Holland Park--A bird's highway--Decrease of songsters--The
thrush in Kensington Gardens--Suggestions--Owls in Kensington
Gardens--Other West London open spaces--Ravenscourt Park as it was
and as it is.
Our 'province' of London is happily not entirely 'covered with houses,'
and in each of its six large districts--West, North-west, North, East,
South-east, and South-west--there are many hundreds of acres of green
and tree-shaded spaces where the Londoner may find a moderate degree of
refreshment. Unfortunately for large masses of the population, these
spaces are very unequally distributed, being mostly situated on or close
to the borderland, where town and country meet; consequently they are of
less value to the dwellers in the central and densely peopled districts
than to the inhabitants of the suburbs, who have pure air and ample
healthy room without these public grounds.
Before going the round of the parks, to note in detail their present
condition and possibilities, chiefly with reference to their wild bird
life, it would be well to take a rapid survey of the metropolitan open
spaces generally. To enable the reader the more closely to follow me in
the survey, I have introduced a map of the County of London on a small
scale, in which the whole of the thickly built-over portion appears
uncoloured; the surrounding country coloured green; the open spaces,
including cemeteries, deep green; the small spaces--squares, graves,
churchyards, gardens, recreation grounds, &c., as dark dots; the
suburban districts, not densely populated, where houses have gardens
and grounds, pale green.
[Illustration: RAVENSCOURT PARK]
Now the white space is not really birdless, being everywhere inhabited
by sparrows, and in parts by numerous and populous colonies of semi-wild
pigeons, while a few birds of other species make their homes in London
gardens. Shirley Hibbert, writing of London birds in 1865, says: 'London
is, indeed, far richer in birds than it deserves to be.' He also says:
'A few birds, however, appear to be specially adapted not merely for
London as viewed from without, but for London _par excellence_, that
is to say for the noisy, almost treeless City; with these for pioneers,
nature invades the Stock Exchange, the Court of Aldermen, the Bank, and
all the railway termini, as if to say, '_Shut us out if you can_.' But
with the exception of these few peculiarly urban species we may take it
that the London birds get their food, breed, and live most of the time
in the open spaces where there are trees and bushes. Even the starling,
which breeds in buildings, must go to the parks to feed.
It must also be borne in mind that birds that penetrate into London from
the surrounding country--those that, like the carrion crow, live on the
borders and fly into or across London every day, migrants in spring and
autumn, young birds reared outside of London going about in search of a
place to settle in, and wanderers generally--all fly to and alight on
the green spaces only. These spaces form their camping grounds. As there
is annually a very considerable influx of feathered strangers, we
can see by a study of the map how much easier to penetrate and more
attractive some portions of the metropolis are than others. It would
simplify the matter still further if we were to look upon London as
an inland sea, an archipelago, about fifty miles in circumference,
containing a few very large islands, several of a smaller size, and
numerous very small ones--a sea or lake with no well-defined shore-line,
but mostly with wide borders which might be described as mixed land and
water, with promontories or tongues of land here and there running into
it. These promontories, also the chains of islands, form, in some cases,
broad green thoroughfares along which the birds come; the sinuous band
of the Thames also forms to some extent a thoroughfare.
I believe it is a fact that in those parts of the suburbs that are
well timbered, and where the houses have gardens and grounds, the bird
population is actually greater (with fewer species) than in the country
proper, even in places where birds are very abundant. In parts of
Norwood, Sydenham, and Streatham, and the neighbourhoods of Dulwich,
Greenwich, Lee, Highgate, and Hampstead, birds are extremely abundant.
Going a little further afield, on one side of the metropolis we have
Epping Forest, and on the opposite side of the metropolis several vast
and well-wooded spaces abounding in bird life--Kew Gardens, the Queen's
private grounds, Old Deer Park, Syon and Richmond parks, Wimbledon, &c.
From all these districts there is doubtless a considerable overflow of
birds each season on to the adjacent country, and into London, and some
of the large parks are well placed to attract these wanderers.
In going into a more detailed account of the parks, it is not my
intention to furnish anything like a formal or guide-book description,
assigning a space to each, but, taking them as they come, singly, in
groups and chains, to touch or dwell only on those points that chiefly
concern us--their characters, comparative advantages, and their needs,
with regard to bird life. Beginning with the central parks and other
parks situated in the West district, we will then pass to the North-west
and North districts, and so on until the circle of the metropolis has
been completed.
* * * * *
The central parks, Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, Green Park, and St.
James's Park, contain respectively 274, 360, 55, and 60 acres--in round
numbers 750 acres. Add to this Holland Park, the enclosed meadow-like
grounds adjoining Kensington Palace, Hyde Park Gardens, St. George's
burial-ground, and Buckingham Palace Gardens, and we get altogether a
total of about nine hundred to one thousand acres of almost continuous
green country, extending from High Street, Kensington, to Westminster.
This very large area (for to the eyes of the flying bird it must
appear as one) is favourably situated to attract and support a very
considerable amount of bird life. At its eastern extremity we see that
it is close to the river, along which birds are apt to travel; while
three miles and a half away, at its other end, it is again near the
Thames, where the river makes a great bend near Hammersmith, and not
very distant from the more or less green country about Acton.
[Illustration: (Map of London)]
There is no doubt that a majority of the summer visitants and wanderers
generally that appear in the central parks come through Holland Park,
as they are usually first observed in the shrubberies and trees at
Kensington Palace. Holland Park, owing to its privacy and fine old
trees, is a favourite resort of wild birds, and is indeed a better
sanctuary than any public park in London. From the palace shrubberies
the new-comers creep in along the Flower Walk, the Serpentine, and
finally by way of the Green Park to St. James's Park. But they do not
stay to breed, the place not being suitable for such a purpose. It is
possible that a few find nesting-places in Buckingham Palace Gardens,
and that others drift into Battersea Park.
Another proof that these parks--so sadly mismanaged from the bird-lover's
point of view--are situated advantageously may be found in the fact
that three of the species which have established colonies in London
within the last few years (wood-pigeon, moorhen, and dabchick) first
formed settlements here, and from this centre have spread over the
entire metropolis, and now inhabit every park and open space where the
conditions are suited to their requirements. These three needed no
encouragement: the summer visitors do certainly need it, and at
Battersea, and in some other parks less than one fourth the size of
Hyde Park, they find it, and are occasionally able to rear their young.
Even the old residents, the sedentary species once common in the central
parks, find it hard to maintain their existence; they have died or are
dying out. The missel-thrush, nuthatch, tree-creeper, oxeye, spotted
woodpecker, and others vanished several years ago. The chaffinch was
reduced to a single pair within the last few years; this pair lingered
on for a year or a little over, then vanished. Last spring, 1897, a few
chaffinches returned, and their welcome song was heard in Kensington
Gardens until June. Not a greenfinch is to be seen, the commonest and
most prolific garden bird in England, so abundant that scores, nay
hundreds, may be bought any Sunday morning in the autumn at the
bird-dealers' shops in the slums of London, at about two pence per
bird, or even less. The wrens a few years ago were reduced to a single
pair, and had their nesting-place near the Albert Memorial; of the
pair I believe one bird now remains. Two, perhaps three, pairs of
hedge-sparrows inhabited Kensington Gardens during the summers of 1896
and 1897, but I do not think they succeeded in rearing any young. Nor
did the one pair in St. James's Park hatch any eggs. In 1897 a pair
of spotted flycatchers bred in Kensington Gardens, and were the only
representatives of the summer visitors of the passerine order in all the
central parks.
The robin has been declining for several years; a decade ago its sudden
little outburst of bright melody was a common autumn and winter sound in
some parts of the park, and in nearly all parts of Kensington Gardens.
This delightful sound became less and less each season, and unless
something is done will before many years cease altogether. The blue and
cole tits are also now a miserable remnant, and are restricted to the
gardens, where they may be seen, four or five together, on the high
elms or clinging to the pendent twigs of the birches. The blackbird and
song-thrush have also fallen very low; I do not believe that there are
more than two dozen of these common birds in all this area of seven
hundred and fifty acres. A larger number could be found in one corner of
Finsbury Park. Finsbury and Battersea could each send a dozen or two of
songsters as a gift to the royal West-end parks, and not miss their
music.
Of all these vanishing species the thrush is most to be regretted, on
account of its beautiful, varied, and powerful voice, for in so noisy
an atmosphere as that of London loudness is a very great merit; also
because (in London) this bird sings very nearly all the year round. Even
at the present time how much these few remaining birds are to us! From
one to two decades ago it was possible on any calm mild day in winter
to listen to half a dozen thrushes singing at various points in the
gardens; now it is very rare to hear more than one, and during the
exceedingly mild winter of 1896-7 I never heard more than two. Even
these few birds make a wonderful difference. There is a miraculous
quality in their voice. In the best of many poems which the Poet
Laureate has addressed to this, his favourite bird, he sings:
Hearing thee first, who pines or grieves
For vernal smiles and showers!
Thy voice is greener than the leaves,
And fresher than the flowers.
Even here in mid-London the effect is the same, and a strange glory
fills the old ruined and deserted place. But, alas! 'tis but an
illusion, and is quickly gone. The tendency for many years past has
been towards a greater artificiality. It saves trouble and makes for
prettiness to cut down decaying trees. To take measures to prevent their
fall, to drape them with ivy and make them beautiful in decay, would
require some thought and care. It is not so long ago that Matthew Arnold
composed his 'Lines written in Kensington Gardens.' It seems but the
other day that he died; but how impossible it would be for anyone
to-day, at this spot, to experience the feeling which inspired those
matchless verses!
In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screened by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye,
Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!
Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city's hum.
How green under the boughs it is!
How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!
Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.
Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.
· · · · ·
In the huge world, which roars hard by,
Be others happy if they can!
But in my helpless cradle I
Was breathed on by the rural Pan.
· · · · ·
Calm soul of all things! Make it mine
To feel amid the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar.
The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.
In these vast gardens and parks, with large trees, shrubberies, wide
green spaces, and lakes, there should be ample room for many scores
of the delightful songsters that are now vanishing or have already
vanished. And much might be done, at a very small cost, to restore these
species, and to add others.
One of the first and most important steps to be taken in order to make
the central parks a suitable home for wild birds, especially of the
songsters, both resident and migratory, that nest on or near the ground,
is the exclusion of the army of cats that hunt every night and all night
long in them. This subject will be discussed more fully in another
chapter.
Proper breeding-places are also greatly wanted--close shrubberies and
rockeries such as we find at Battersea and Finsbury Parks. The existing
shrubberies give no proper shelter. In planting them the bird's need of
privacy was not considered; the space allowed to them is too small, the
species of plants that birds prefer to roost and nest in are too few.
It would make a wonderful difference if in place of so many unsuitable
exotic shrubs (especially of the ugly, dreary-looking rhododendron) we
had more of the always pleasing yew and holly; also furze and bramble;
with other native plants to be found in any country hedge, massed
together in that charming disorder which men as well as birds prefer,
although the gardeners do not know it. There are several spots in
Kensington Gardens where masses of evergreens would look well and would
form welcome refuges to scores of shy songsters.
The more or less open ground north of the Flower Walk forms a deep
well-sheltered hollow, where it would be easy to create a small pond
with rushes and osiers growing in it, which would be very attractive to
the birds. It would be easy to make a spot in every park in London where
the sedge-warbler could breed.
Another very much needed improvement is an island in the Serpentine,
which would serve to attract wild birds. The Serpentine is by a good
deal the largest of the artificial lakes of inner London, yet with the
exception of a couple of moorhens, and in winter a stray gull or two
seen flying over the water, it has no wild bird life, simply because
there is no spot where a wild bird can breed. The existing small island,
close to the north bank and the sub-rangers' village, is used by some of
the ducks to breed in. Something might be done to make this island more
attractive to birds.
With one, perhaps two, exceptions, the comparatively large birds in the
central parks have been so fully written about in former chapters that
nothing more need be said of them in this place. It remains only to
speak of the owls in Kensington Gardens.
It is certainly curious to find that in these gardens, where, as we have
seen, birds are not encouraged, two such species as the jackdaw and owl
are still resident, although long vanished from all their other old
haunts in London. Of so important a bird as the owl I should have
preferred to write at some length in one of the earlier chapters, but
there was very little to say, owing to its rarity and secrecy. Nor could
it be included in the chapters on recent colonists, since it is probable
that it has always been an inhabitant of Kensington Gardens, although
its existence there has not been noticed by those who have written
on the wild bird life of London. It is unfortunate that we have no
enjoyment of our owls: they hide from sight in the old hollow trees,
and when they occasionally exercise their voices at night we are not
there to hear them. Still, it is a pleasure to know that they are there,
and probably always have been there. It is certain that during the past
year both the brown and white owl have been living in the gardens, as
the night-watchers hear the widely different vocal performances of both
birds, and have also seen both species. Probably there are not more than
two birds of each kind. Owls have the habit of driving away their young,
and the stray white owls occasionally seen or heard in various parts of
London may be young birds driven from the gardens. Some time ago the
cries of a white owl were heard on several nights at Lambeth Palace, and
it was thought that the bird had made its home in the tower of Lambeth
Church, close by. In the autumn of 1896 a solitary white owl frequented
the trees at Buckhurst Hill. An ornithological friend told me that
he had seen an owl, probably the same bird, one evening flying over
the Serpentine; and on inquiring of some of the park people, I was
told that they knew nothing about an owl, but that a cockatoo had
mysteriously appeared every evening at dusk on one of the trees near
the under-ranger's lodge! After a few weeks it was seen no more. I fancy
that this owl had been expelled from the gardens by its parents.
* * * * *
Directly in line with the central and Holland parks, about a mile and a
quarter west of Holland Park, we have Ravenscourt Park--the last link of
a broken chain. To the birds that come and go it occupies the position
of a half-way house between the central parks and the country proper.
Unhappily West Kensington, which lies between Holland and Ravenscourt
Parks, is now quite covered with houses--a brand-new yet depressing
wilderness of red brick, without squares, gardens, boulevards, or
breathing spaces of any description whatsoever. Away on the right
hand and on the left a few small green spaces are found--on one hand
Shepherd's Bush Green, and on the other Brook Green, St. Paul's Schools
ornamental grounds, and Hammersmith Cemetery and Cricket Ground. But
from West Kensington it is far for children's feet to a spot of green
turf.
Ravenscourt, though not large (32 acres), is very beautiful. With
Waterlow, Clissold, and Brockwell Parks it shares the distinction of
being a real park, centuries old; and despite the new features, the
gravelled paths, garden-beds, iron railings, &c., which had to be
introduced when it was opened to the public, it retains much of its
original park-like character. Its venerable elms, hornbeams, beeches,
cedars, and hawthorns are a very noble possession. To my mind this
indeed is the most beautiful park in London, or perhaps I should say
that it _would_ be the most beautiful if the buildings round it were not
so near and conspicuous. It may be that I am somewhat prejudiced in its
favour. I knew it when it was private, and the old image is very vivid
to memory; I lived for a long time beside it in sad days, when the
constant sight of such a green and shady wilderness from my window was a
great consolation. It was beautiful even in the cold, dark winter months
when it was a waste of snow, and when, despite the bitter weather, the
missel-thrush poured out its loud triumphant notes from the top of
a tall elm. In its spring and summer aspect it had a wild grace and
freshness, which made it unlike any other spot known to me in or near
London. The old manor house inside the park was seldom occupied; no
human figure was visible in the grounds; there were no paths, and all
things grew untended. The grass was everywhere long, and in spring lit
with colour of myriads of wild flowers; from dawn to dusk its shady
places were full of the melody of birds; exquisitely beautiful in its
dewy and flowery desolation, it was like a home of immemorial peace, the
one remnant of unadulterated nature in the metropolis.
The alterations that had to be made in this park when the County Council
took it over produced in me an unpleasant shock; and the birds were also
seriously affected by the change. When the gates were thrown open, in
1888, and a noisy torrent of humanity poured in and spread itself over
their sweet sanctuary, they fled in alarm, and for a time the park was
almost birdless. The carrion crows, strange to say, stuck to their
nesting-tree, and by-and-by some of the deserters began to return, to
be followed by others, and now there is as much bird life as in the old
days. It is probable, however, that some of the summer visitors
have ceased to breed. At present we have the crow, wood-pigeon,
missel-thrush, chaffinch, wren, hedge-sparrow, and in the summer the
pied wagtail and spotted flycatcher and willow-wren.
[Illustration: CORMORANTS AT ST. JAMES'S PARK]
CHAPTER X
NORTH-WEST AND NORTH LONDON
Open spaces on the border of West London--The Scrubs, Old Oak Common,
and Kensal Green Cemetery--North-west district--Paddington
Recreation Ground, Kilburn Park, and adjoining open spaces--Regent's
Park described--Attractive to birds, but not safe--Hampstead Heath:
its character and bird life--The ponds--A pair of moorhens--An
improvement suggested--North London districts--Highgate Woods,
Churchyard Bottom Wood, Waterlow Park, and Highgate Cemetery--Finsbury
Park--A paradise of thrushes--Clissold Park and Abney Park Cemetery.
Before proceeding to give a brief account of the parks and open spaces
of North-west and North London it
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