Birds in London Part 10

I fear the yellowhammer will not long remain in such a pandemonium. The people of Wandsworth are hardly deserving of such a bird.

Tooting Common is the general name for two commons--Tooting Bec and Tooting Graveney, 144 and 66 acres respectively. A public road divides them, but they form really one area. Tooting Bec has a fair amount of gorse and bramble bushes scattered about, and a good many old trees, mostly oak. The number of old trees gives this s.p.a.ce something of a park-like appearance, but it is not exhilarating; on the contrary, its effect on the mind is rather depressing, on account of the perfect flatness of the ground and the sadly decayed and smoke-blackened condition of the trees. An 'improvement' of the late Metropolitan Board of Works was the planting of a very long and very straight avenue of fast-growing black poplars, and this belt of weed-like ungraceful trees, out of keeping with everything, has made Tooting Bec positively ugly.

Another improvement has been introduced by the County Council; this is the usual small pond and the usual couple of big swans. The rage for putting these huge birds in numberless small ponds and miniature lakes can only proceed from a singular want of imagination on the part of the park gardeners and park decorators employed by the Council; or we might suppose that the Council have purchased a big job lot of swans, which they are anxious to distribute about London. These dreary little ponds might easily be made exceedingly interesting, if planted round with willows and rushes and stocked with a few of the smaller pretty ornamental water-fowl in place of their present big unsuitable occupants.

Tooting Graveney has a fresher, wilder aspect, and is a pleasanter place than its sister common. Its surroundings, too, are far more rural, as it has for neighbours Streatham Park and the wide green s.p.a.ces of Furze Down and Totterdown Fields. Tooting Graveney itself is in the condition of the old Clapham Common as Macaulay knew it in his boyhood. Its surface is rough with gra.s.s-grown mounds, old gravel-pits, and excavations, and it is grown over with bushes of furze, bramble, and brier, and with scattered birch-trees and old dwarf hawthorns, looking very pretty. Wild birds are numerous, although probably few are able to rear any young on the common. The missel-thrush, now very rare in London, breeds in private grounds close by.

Streatham Common (66 acres) is the least as well as the outermost of the group of large commons; it is but half the size of Clapham Common. But though so much smaller than the others, it is the most interesting, owing to the hilly nature of the ground and to the fine prospect to be had of the country beyond. It forms a rather long strip, and from the highest part at the upper end the vision ranges over the beautifully wooded and hilly Surrey country to and beyond Epsom. This upper end of the common is extremely pretty, overgrown with furze and bramble bushes, and pleasantly shaded with trees at one side. Birds when breeding cannot be protected on the common; the wild bird life is nevertheless abundant and varied, on account of the large private grounds adjoining.

It is pleasant to sit here on a spring or summer day and watch the jays that come to the trees overhead; like other London jays and the London fieldfares, they are strangely tame compared with these birds in the country. Out in the suns.h.i.+ne the skylark mounts up singing; and here, too, may be heard the nightingale. He does not merely make a short stay on his arrival in spring, as at some other spots in the suburbs, but remains to breed. Yet here we are only six and a half miles from Charing Cross. It is still more surprising to find the magpie at Streatham, in the wooded grounds which join the common. Rooks are numerous at Streatham, and their rookery close to Streatham Common station is a singularly interesting one. It is on an avenue of tall elms which formerly stood on open gra.s.s-land. A few years ago this land was built over, rows of houses being erected on each side of and parallel with the avenue, which now stands in the back gardens or yards, with the back windows of the houses looking on it. But in spite of all these changes, and the large human population gathered round them, the birds have stuck to their rookery; and last summer (1897) there were about thirty inhabited nests.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NIGHTINGALE ON ITS NEST]

From Streatham we go back to the river, to a point about a mile and a half west of Wandsworth Common, to Fulham Palace grounds on the Middles.e.x side, and the open s.p.a.ces at Barnes on the Surrey side.

Bishop's Park, Fulham, of which about 12 acres are free to the public, is one of London's rare beauty-spots. A considerable portion of the palace grounds is within the moat, and the moat, the n.o.ble old trees, and wide green s.p.a.ces, form an appropriate setting to the ancient stately Bishop's Palace. The lamentable mistake has been made of placing this open s.p.a.ce in the control of the Fulham Vestry; and, as might have been expected, they have been improving it in accordance with the aesthetic ideas of the ordinary suburban tradesman, by cutting down the old trees, planting rows of evergreens to hide the beautiful inner grounds from view, and by erecting cast-iron painted fountains, shelters, and other architectural freaks of a similar character. That the inhabitants of Fulham can see unmoved this vulgarisation of so n.o.ble and beautiful a remnant of the past--the spot in London which recalls the moated Bishop's Palace at Wells--is really astonis.h.i.+ng.

To the bird-lover as well as to the student of history this is a place of memories, for here in the time of Henry VIII. spoonbills and herons built their nests on the old trees in the bishop's grounds. At the present time there are some sweet songsters--thrush, blackbird, robin, dunnock, wren, chaffinch, and a few summer visitants. Here, too, we find the wood-pigeon, but not the 'ecclesiastical daw' or other distinguished species, and, strange to say, no moat-hen in the large old moat. How much more interesting this water would be, with its gra.s.s-grown banks and ancient shade-giving trees, if it had a few feathered inhabitants!

Simply by lowering the banks at a few points and planting some reeds and rushes, it would quickly attract those two very common and always interesting London species, the moorhen and the little grebe. The sedge-warbler, too, would perhaps come in time.

I have been informed that London Bishops care for none of these things.

Looking across the river from Fulham Palace grounds, an extensive well-wooded s.p.a.ce is seen on the south bank; this is Barn Elms Park, now occupied by the Ranelagh Sporting Club. It is one of the best private parks in London, with fine old elm-trees and a lake, and would be a paradise of wild birds but for the shooting which goes on there and scares them away.

Close to Barn Elms is Barnes Common (100 acres), a pleasant open heath, not all flat, grown with heather, and dotted with furze and bramble bushes and a few trees. One of its attractions is Beverley Brook, which rises near Malden, about eight miles away, and flows by Coombe Woods, Wimbledon, through Richmond Park, and, finally, by Barnes Common to the Thames: the brook and a very pretty green meadow separate the common from Barn Elms Park.

The London and South-Western Railway Company have been allowed to appropriate a portion of this open s.p.a.ce; but that indeed seems a very small matter when we find that the parishes of Barnes and Putney have established two cemeteries on the common, using a good many of its scanty 100 acres for the purpose. What would be said if the Government were to allow two cemeteries for the accommodation of the parishes of Kensington and Paddington to be made in the middle of Kensington Gardens? I fail to see that it is less an outrage to have turned a portion of Barnes Common into hideous walled round Golgothas, with mortuary chapels, the ground studded with grave-stones and filled with putrefying corpses. It is devoutly to be hoped that before very long the people of London will make the discovery that it rests with themselves whether their house shall be put in order or not; and when that time comes that these horrible forests of grave-stones and monuments to the dead will be brushed away, and that such bodies as the Barnes Conservators and the Fulham Vestry will for ever be deprived of the powers they so lamentably misuse.

It would be difficult for any bird, big or little, to rear its young on a s.p.a.ce so unprotected as this common; many birds, however, come to it, attracted by its open heath-like character. Here the skylark and yellowhammer may be heard, as well as the common resident songsters found in other open s.p.a.ces. The carrion crow is a constant visitor, and very tame, knowing that he is safe. Beverley Brook has no aquatic birds in it, but it would be easy to make a small rushy sanctuary in the marshy borders, protected from mischievous persons, for the moorhen, sedge-warbler, and other species. I have seen a small boy with an earthworm at the end of a piece of thread pull out thirty to forty minnows in as many minutes. Little grebes and kingfishers would not want for food in such a place.

South and west of Barnes Common, London, as we progress, becomes increasingly rural, with large private park-like grounds, until we arrive at the open s.p.a.ces of Putney Heath, Lower Putney Common, and Wimbledon Common, which together form an area of 1,412 acres, or nearly three times as large as Hampstead Heath. It seems only appropriate that the most rural portion of the most rural district in London should have so large an open s.p.a.ce, and that in character this s.p.a.ce should be wilder and more refres.h.i.+ng to the spirit than any other in the metropolis. It has the further advantage (from the point of view of the residents) of not being too easy of access to the ma.s.s of the people.

This makes it 'select,' a semi-private recreation ground for the residents, and a 'Happy Hampstead' to a limited number of c.o.c.kneys of a superior kind. Here the fascinating game of golf, excluded from other public s.p.a.ces, may be practised; and the golfer, arrayed like the poppies of the cornfield and visible at a vast distance, strolls leisurely about as his manner is, or stands motionless to watch the far flight of his small ball, which will kill no one and hit no one, since strangers moving about on the grounds are actually fewer than would be seen on the links at Hayling, or even Minehead.

It is a solitary place, and its solitariness is its princ.i.p.al charm. A wide open heath, with some pretty patches of birch wood, stretches of brown heather, dotted in places with furze-bushes like little black islands; but on that part which is called Putney Heath furze and bramble and brier grow thick and luxuriant. One may look far in some directions and see no houses nor other sign of human occupancy to spoil the effect of seclusion and wildness. Over all is the vast void sky and the rapturous music of the skylark.

At Wimbledon one has the idea of being at a considerable elevation; the highest point is really only 300 feet above the sea level, but it is set in a deep depression, and from some points the sight may range as far as the hills about Guildford and G.o.dalming. There are persons of sensitive olfactories who affirm that when the wind blows from the south coast they can smell the sea-salt in it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WIMBLEDON COMMON]

But Wimbledon is not all open heath and common; it has also an extensive wood, delightfully wild, the only large birch wood near the metropolis.

The missel-thrush, nuthatch, and tree-creeper breed here, and the jay is common and tame; I have seen as many as six together. In this wood a finer concert of nightingales may be heard in summer than at any other place near London. In winter fieldfares and pewits are often seen.

Carrion crows from Coombe Woods and other breeding-places in the neighbourhood are constantly seen on the common in pairs and small parties, and are strangely familiar. Rooks, too, are extremely abundant.

Richmond Park is their roosting-place in winter, and there are numerous rookeries, large and small, in the neighbourhood--at Sheen Gate, at various points along the Kingston road, at Norbiton and Kingston, on the estate of the late Madame Lyne Stevens, at Coombe Woods, and at Wimbledon itself, in some large elms growing at the side of the High Street on Sir Henry Peek's property. Concerning this rookery there is an interesting fact to relate. About six years ago the experiment of shooting the young rooks was tried, with the very best intentions, the rookery being greatly prized. But these rooks were not accustomed to be thinned down (for their own good) every summer, and they forsook the trees. Everything was then done to entice them back; artificial nests were constantly kept on the tree-tops, and in winter food in abundance was placed for the birds; but though they came readily enough to regale on bread and sc.r.a.ps they refused to settle until last spring (1897), when they returned in a body and rebuilt the rookery.

This book is mainly about birds, but I cannot help mentioning the fact that in the wood at Wimbledon that rare and interesting mammal, the badger, found at only one other spot on the borders of London, is permitted to spend his hermit life in peace.

Here, in solitude and shade, Shambling, shuffling plantigrade, Be thy courses undismayed.

It may seem almost absurd in writing of a London wild animal to quote from Bret Harte's ode to the great grizzly in the Western wilderness!

Nevertheless Wimbledon may be proud to possess even the poor little quaint timid badger--cousin, a million times removed, to the mighty bear, the truculent coward, as the poet says, with tiger claws on baby feet, who has a giant's strength and is satisfied to prey on wasps'

nests.

Recently, on one of the largest estates in England, in a part of the country where the badger is now all but extinct, it was reported at the big house that a pair of these animals had established themselves in the forest, which, it may be mentioned, is very large--about eighteen miles round. A grand campaign was at once organised, and a large number of men and boys, armed with guns, spades, hatchets, pitchforks, and bludgeons, and followed by many dogs, went out to the attack. Arrived at the den, at the roots of a giant beech-tree, they set to work to dig the animals out. It was a huge task, but there were many to help, and in the end the badgers were found, old and young together, and killed.

Let us imagine that when this business was proceeding with tremendous excitement and noise of shouting men and barking dogs, some person buried at that spot in old Palaeolithic times had been raised up to view the spectacle; that it had been explained to him that these hunters were his own remote descendants; that one of them was a mighty n.o.bleman, a kind of chief or king, whose possessions extended on every side as far as the eye could see; that the others were his followers who served and obeyed him; and that they were all engaged in hunting and killing the last badger, the most terrible wild beast left in the land! I think that the old hunter, who, with his rude stone-headed spear had fought with and overcome even mightier beasts than the grizzly bear, would have emitted a strange and perhaps terrifying sound, a burst of primitive laughter very shrill and prolonged, resembling the neigh of a wild horse, or perhaps deep, from a deep chest, like the baying of a bloodhound.

Richmond Park (2,470 acres) both in its vast extent and character is unlike any other metropolitan open s.p.a.ce. The n.o.blest of the breathing-s.p.a.ces on our borders, it is also the most accessible, and more or less well known to tens of thousands of persons; but it is probably intimately known only to a few. Speaking for myself, I can say that after having visited it occasionally for years, sometimes to spend a whole day in it, sometimes to get lost in it, both in fine and foggy weather, I do not know it so well as other large open s.p.a.ces which have not been visited more often. Any person well acquainted with the country would probably find it easy at a moment's notice to name half a dozen parks which have pleased him better than this one, on account of a certain monotony in the scenery of Richmond, but in size it would surpa.s.s most or all of them. So large is it that half a dozen such London parks as Clissold, Waterlow, and Ravenscourt might easily be hidden in one corner of it, where it would not be easy to find them.

There are roads running in various directions, and on most days many persons may be seen on them, driving, riding, cycling, and walking; yet they all may be got away from, and long hours spent out of sight and hearing of human beings, in the most perfect solitude. This is the greatest attraction of Richmond Park, and its best virtue. Strange to say, this very quietude and solitariness produce a disturbing effect on many Londoners. Alas for those who have so long existed apart from Nature as to have become wholly estranged, who are troubled in mind at her silence and austerity! To others this green desert is London's best possession, a sacred place where those who have lost their strength may find it again, and those who are distempered may recover their health.

The largeness and quietness of Richmond, its old oak woods, water, and wide open s.p.a.ces, and its proximity to the river, have given it not only an abundant but a n.o.bler wild bird life than is found at any other point so near to the centre of the metropolis. Here all the best songsters, including the nightingale, may be heard. Wild duck and teal and a few other water birds, rear their young in the ponds. Our two most beautiful woodland birds, the green woodp.e.c.k.e.r and the jay, are common.

Rooks are numerous, especially in winter, when they congregate to roost.

Here, too, you may hear the carrion crow's 'voice of care.' Jackdaws are certainly more plentiful than anywhere within one hundred miles of London. One day I counted fifty in a flock, and saw them settle on the trees; then going a little distance on I saw another flock numbering about forty, and beyond this lot from another wood sounded the clamour of a third flock. Even then I had probably not seen _all_ the Richmond daws; perhaps not more than half the entire number, for I was a.s.sured by a keeper that there were 'millions.' He was a very tall white-haired old man with aquiline features and dark fierce eyes, and therefore must have known what he was talking about.

Best of all are the herons that breed in the park, and appear to be increasing. One fine evening in February last I counted twenty together at Sidmouth Wood. A mult.i.tude of rooks and daws had settled on the tree-tops where the herons were; but after a few minutes they rose up with a great noise, and were followed by the herons, who mounted high above the black cawing crowd, looking very large and majestic against the pale clear sky. It was the finest spectacle in wild bird life I had ever seen so close to London.

It is a great thing for Richmond to have the heron, which is no longer common; and now that the kite, buzzard, and raven have been lost, it is the only large soaring inland species which, once seen, appears as an indispensable part of the landscape. Take it away, and the large comparatively wild nature loses half its charm.

In a former chapter I have endeavoured to show how great the aesthetic value of the daw is to our cathedrals. The old dead builders of these great temples owe perhaps as much to this bird as to the softening and harmonising effects of time and weather. Again, every one must feel that the effect of sublimity produced on us by our boldest cliffs is greatly enhanced by the sea-fowl, soaring along the precipitous face of the rocks, and peopling their ledges, tier above tier of birds, the highest, seen from below, appearing as mere white specks. A similar effect is produced by large soaring birds on any inland landscape; the horizon is widened and the sky lifted to an immeasurable height. Some such idea as this, of the indescribable charm of the large soaring bird, of its value to the artistic eye in producing the effect of distance and vastness in nature, was probably in our late lost artist-poet's mind when he painted the following exquisite word-picture:--

High up and light are the clouds; and though the swallows flit So high above the sunlit earth, they are well a part of it; And so though high over them are the wings of the wandering hern, In measureless depths above him doth the fair sky quiver and burn.

Speaking for myself, without the 'wandering hern,' or buzzard, or other large soaring species, the sky does not impress me with its height and vastness; and without the sea-fowl the most tremendous sea-fronting cliff is a wall which may be any height; and the n.o.blest cathedral without any jackdaws soaring and gamboling about its towers is apt to seem little more than a great barn, or a Dissenting chapel on a gigantic scale.

Kew Gardens, with the adjoining s.p.a.ces of Old Deer Park and the Queen's Private Grounds, comprising an area of about 600 acres, with a river frontage of over two miles, is in even closer touch with London than its near neighbour, Richmond Park. From the heart of the city two princ.i.p.al thoroughfares run west, and, uniting on the farther side of Hammersmith, extend with few breaks in the walls of brick and gla.s.s on either side to Kew Bridge. The distance from the Mansion House to the bridge is about ten miles, and the few remaining gaps in the westernmost portion of this long busy way are now rapidly being filled up. What was formerly the village of Kew is now an integral part of London the Monotonous, in appearance just like other suburbs--Wormwood Scrubs, Kilburn, Muswell Hill, Green Lanes, Dulwich, and Norwood.

Kew Gardens (251 acres) is, or until very recently was, one of the three or four spots on the borders of the metropolis most favoured by the birds. They were attracted to it by its large size, the woodland character of most of the ground, and its unrivalled position on the river in the immediate vicinity of several other extensive open s.p.a.ces.

The breeding place of most of the birds was in the Queen's Private Grounds, a wedge of land between the Gardens and Old Deer Park, a wilderness and perfect sanctuary for all wild creatures. In this green wooded spot and the adjoining gardens the following species have bred annually: missel-thrush, throstle, blackbird, redstart, robin, nightingale, whitethroat, lesser whitethroat, blackcap, garden-warbler, chiffchaff, willow-wren, wood-wren, sedge-warbler, dunnock, wren, great, coal, blue, and long-tailed t.i.ts, nuthatch, tree-creeper, pied wagtail, tree-pipit, spotted flycatcher, swallow, house-martin, greenfinch, common sparrow, chaffinch, starling, jay, crow, swift, green and lesser woodp.e.c.k.e.r, wryneck, cuckoo, pheasant, partridge, wood-pigeon, moorhen, dabchick--in all forty-three species. Besides these there is good reason to believe that the following six species have been breeders in the Queen's grounds during recent years: goldcrest, marsh t.i.t, goldfinch, hawfinch, bullfinch, and magpie.

This list will prove useful to London naturalists in the near future, as many changes in the bird life of Kew may shortly be looked for. With the opening of the Queen's grounds the partridge and pheasant will cease to breed there; the crow is not now allowed to build in the gardens; the nightingales have decreased to a very few birds during the last three or four seasons; and last summer (1897) the wood-wren failed to put in an appearance. To say that there will be other and greater changes is unhappily only too safe a prophecy to make. For several years past tree-felling has been vigorously prosecuted in the gardens to give them a more open park-like appearance; new gravelled roads have been laid down in all directions, and the policy generally has been that of the landscape-gardener which makes for prettiness, with the result that the aspect and character of this spot have been quite altered, and it is fast becoming as unsuitable a breeding place for the summer warblers and other shy woodland species as any royal west-end park.

Up till two months ago, it was some consolation to those who grieved at the changes in progress in Kew Gardens to think that the Queen's private grounds adjoining were safe from the despoiler. This area is separated from the gardens by nothing but a wire fence; one could walk the entire breadth of the grounds with that untrimmed, exquisitely beautiful wooded wilderness always in sight; many acres of n.o.ble trees--oak, ash, elm, beech, hornbeam, and Spanish chestnut; a shady paradise, the old trunks draped with ivy, or grey and emerald green with moss; ma.s.ses of bramble and brier, furze and holly, growing untouched beneath; the open green s.p.a.ces a sea of blue in spring with the enchanting blue of the wild hyacinth. There was not anywhere on the borders of London--that weary circuit of fifty miles--so fresh and perfect a transcript of wild woodland nature as this, with the sole exception of Lord Mansfield's private grounds at Hampstead.

Unhappily just before the announcement was made early in 1898 that the Queen had graciously decided to admit the public to this lovely ground, a gang of labourers was sent in to grub up the undergrowth, to lop off lower branches, and cut down many scores of the n.o.blest old trees, with the object apparently of bringing the place more into harmony with the adjoining trim gardens. It is earnestly to be hoped that nothing further will be done to ruin the most perfect beauty-spot that remains to London.

Here our survey ends.