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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.