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.