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.