Birds in London Part 5

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 s.h.i.+rley Hibberd wrote that this bird was very common in London: 'Robins are seen among the hay-carts at Whitechapel, Smithfield, and c.u.mberland 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 s.h.i.+nes 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, superst.i.tion 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 ma.s.sive 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 antic.i.p.ation of what will be said in a later chapter, that if suitable places were provided for them, the robins would increase year by year from this natural cause.

There are other movements of robins in London which it will be more in order to notice in the next chapter.

CHAPTER VIII

MOVEMENTS OF LONDON BIRDS

Migration as seen in London--Swallows in the parks--Fieldfares--A flock of wild geese--Autumn movements of resident species--Wood-pigeons--A curious habit--Dabchicks and moorhens--Crows and rooks--The Palace daws--Starlings--Robins--A Tower robin and the Tower sparrows--Pa.s.sage birds in the parks--Small birds wintering in London--Influx of birds during severe frosts--Occasional visitors--The black-headed gull--A winter scene in St. James's Park.

The seasonal movements of the strict migrants are little noticed in London; there are few such species that visit, fewer still that remain any time with us. And when they come we scarcely see them: they are not like the residents, reacted on and modified by their surroundings, made tame, ready to feed from our hands, to thrust themselves at all times upon our attention. Nevertheless we do occasionally see something of these shyer wilder ones, the strangers and pa.s.sengers; and in London, as in the rural districts, it is the autumnal not the vernal migration which impresses the mind. Birds are seldom seen arriving in spring.

Walking to-day in some park or garden, we hear the first willow-wren's delicate tender warble among the fresh April foliage. It was not heard yesterday, but the small modest-coloured singer may have been there nevertheless, hidden and silent among the evergreens. The birds that appear in the autumn are plainly travellers that have come from some distant place, and have yet far to go. Wheatears may be seen if looked for in August on Hampstead Heath, and occasionally a few other large open s.p.a.ces in or near London. In September and October swallows and martins put in an appearance, and although they refuse to make their summer home in inner London, they often come in considerable numbers and remain for many days, even for weeks, in the parks in autumn.

It has been conjectured that the paucity of winged insect life in London is the cause of the departure of swallows and house-martins as breeding species. Yet in the autumn of 1896, from September to the middle of October, hundreds of these birds lived in the central and many other parks in London, and doubtless they found a sufficiency of food in spite of the cold east winds which prevailed at that time.

Among the winter visitors to the outskirts of the metropolis, the fieldfare is the most abundant as well as the most attractive. During the winters of 1895-6 and 1896-7 I saw them on numberless occasions at Wimbledon, Richmond, Hampstead Heath, Bostell Woods, Hackney Marsh, Wanstead, Dulwich, Brockwell Park, Streatham, and other open s.p.a.ces and woods round London. In the gardens of the outer suburbs there is always a great profusion of winter berries, and the felts seen in these places are probably regular visitors. Certainly they are tamer than fieldfares are apt to be in the country, but they seldom penetrate far into the brick-and-mortar wilderness. I have seen a few in Kensington Gardens, and in November, 1896, a few fieldfares alighted on a tree at the Tower of London. Stranger still, in February 1897 a flock of wild geese was observed flying over the Tower: the birds went down the river flying low, as it was noticed that when they pa.s.sed over the Tower Bridge they were not higher than the pinnacles of the two big towers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIELDFARES AT THE TOWER]

The birds that are strange to London eyes are very nearly all seen in the autumn, from September to November. At this mutable season a person who elects to spend his nights on the roof, with rugs and an umbrella to keep out cold and wet, may be rewarded by hearing far-off shrill delicate noises of straggling sandpipers or other sh.o.r.e birds on pa.s.sage, or the mysterious cry of the lapwing, 'wailing his way from cloud to cloud.'

All these rare sights and sounds are for the very patient watchers and listeners; nevertheless they are the only 'authentic tidings' the Londoner receives of that great and wonderful wave of life which travels southward over half the globe in advance of winter. This annual exodus and sublime flight to distant delectable regions beyond the sea is, however, only taken part in by some of the feathered people; meanwhile the others that remain to brave the cold and scarcity are also seen to be infected with a restless spirit and desire of change. The starling, missel-thrush, larks and pipits, and other kinds, alter their way of life, uniting in flocks and becoming wanderers over the face of the country. Finches, too, go a-gypsying: the more sedentary species leave their breeding-haunts for suitable winter quarters; and everywhere there is a great movement, a changing of places, packing and scattering, a hurrying to and fro all over the land.

The London birds are no exception, although their autumnal movements have hitherto attracted little attention. These movements are becoming more noticeable, owing to changes going on in the character of the metropolitan bird population. The sparrow, as we have seen, does not leave home, but recently there has been a great increase in the more vagrant species, the starling and wood-pigeon especially. During the last few years the wood-pigeon has been growing somewhat more domestic, and less inclined to leave town than formerly, but from time to time the old wandering instinct rea.s.serts itself, and it was observed that during the autumn of 1896 a majority of the birds left London. At Lincoln's Inn Fields there were thirteen birds down to the end of September, then all but one disappeared. This solitary stayer-at-home had been sprung upon and injured by a cat some time before the day of departure.

Last year, 1897, the autumnal exodus was even greater. Thus, on October 25 I walked the whole length of the three central parks, and saw no pigeons except one pair of young birds not long out of the nest, in Hyde Park, and one parent bird feeding them. The other parent had probably gone away to the country, leaving his mate to rear this very late brood as best she could. Doubtless many of these wanderers from the metropolis get killed in the country, but in December and January the survivors return to the safety of the parks, and to a monotonous diet of stale bread.

It is probable that with the change of temperature in September and October the London wood-pigeons, like so many birds, are seized by a restless and roving spirit; but I am inclined to believe that the taste of wild nuts and fruits, which they get in the parks at that season, is one cause of their going away. They do not get much of this natural food; they first strip the oaks of their acorns almost before they are quite ripe, depriving the London urchins of their little harvest, and then attack the haws and holly-berries; and when this small supply has been exhausted the birds go further afield in search of more.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WOOD-PIGEON FEEDING ON HAWS]

On the evening of August 26, 1897, I saw a number of wood-pigeons feeding on the haws in a manner quite new in my experience. There were twelve or fourteen birds on a good-sized thorn-tree growing in Buckingham Palace grounds; but the berries on this tree grew at the tips of long slender branches and could not have been reached by the birds in the ordinary way. The pigeons would settle on a branch and then begin moving cautiously towards the points, the branch bending beneath the weight more and more until the bird, unable to keep any longer _on_ the branch, would suddenly turn over and remain hanging head down, suspended by its clinging feet. In this position, by stretching its neck it would be able to reach the berries, which it would then leisurely devour. As many as four or five birds were seen at one time hanging in this way, appearing with wings half-open like dead or wounded birds tied by their feet to the branchlets, from which they were suspended. Since witnessing this curious scene I have been told by Mr.

Coppin, the superintendent at Battersea Park, that he has seen the wood-pigeons at that place acting in the same way. It is probably a habit of the birds which has. .h.i.therto escaped notice.

The dabchicks leave London in the autumn and return in spring: they may be looked for in the ornamental waters as early as the third week in March. The moorhens formerly disappeared from London in winter; they are now residents throughout the year in a few of the parks where there is shelter, and during severe frosts they feed at the same table with the ornamental water-fowl. From all the smaller lakes which they have recently colonised they vanish in cold weather. In autumn they wander about a good deal by night; any small piece of water will attract them, and their cries will be heard during the dark hours; before it is light they will be gone.

Crows and rooks are most often seen in London during the winter months.

Many rooks have their winter roosting-place in Richmond Park, and small bands of these birds visit the central parks and other open s.p.a.ces. On the morning of February 3, 1897, about fifty rooks visited Kensington Gardens and fed for some hours on the strip of gra.s.sed land adjoining the palace. The whole jackdaw colony, numbering twenty-four birds, fed with them, and when, about twelve o'clock, the visitors rose up and flew away, the daws, after seeing them off, returned in a body to the tree-tops near the palace, and for the rest of the day continued in an excited state. From time to time they would rush up with a loud clamour, then return to the tree-tops, where they would sit close together and silent as if expecting something, and at intervals of a minute or two a simultaneous cry would burst from them.

I have observed that on winter evenings these daws fly away from the gardens in a north-westerly direction: where their winter roosting-place is I have not discovered.

The starling is the most interesting London bird in his autumn movements.

It is only at the end of July, when they are gathered in large bodies, that some idea can be formed of their numbers. Flocks of a dozen to forty or fifty birds may be seen in any park and green s.p.a.ce any day throughout the winter; these are the birds that winter with us, and are but a small remnant of the entire number that breed in London. At the end of June the starlings begin to congregate every evening at their favourite roosting-places. Of these there are several, the most favoured being the islands in the ornamental water at Regent's Park, the island in the Serpentine, and at Buckingham Palace grounds and Battersea Park.

The last is the most important. Before sunset the birds are seen pouring in, flock after flock, from all quarters, until the trees on the island are black with their thousands, and the noise of their singing and chattering is so great that a person standing on the edge of the lake can hardly hear himself speak. These meeting places are evidently growing in favour, and if the autumn of 1898 shows as great an increase as those of 1896 and 1897 over previous years, London will have as compensation for its lost rookeries some very fine clouds of starlings.

At the beginning of October most of the birds go away to spend the winter in the country, or possibly abroad. In February and March they begin to reappear in small flocks, and gradually scatter over the whole area of the metropolis, each pair going back to its old nesting-hole.

The annual scattering of robins at the end of summer, when, after the moult, the old birds attack and drive away the young, has been described in the last chapter. This habit of the bird alone would cause a good deal of moving about of the London robins each year, but it is also a very general belief of ornithologists that at this season there is a large migratory movement of young robins throughout the country. At all events, it is a fact that in August and September robins go about in London a good deal, and frequently appear in the most unlikely places.

Some of these are no doubt birds of the year hatched in London or the suburbs, and others may be migrating robins pa.s.sing through.

At the Tower of London robins occasionally appear in autumn, but soon go away. The last one that came settled down and was a great favourite with the people there for about two months, being very friendly, coming to window-sills for crumbs, and singing every day very beautifully. Then one day he was seen in the General's garden wildly das.h.i.+ng about, hotly pursued by seven or eight sparrows, and as he was never seen again it was conjectured that the sparrows had succeeded in killing him. The robin is a high-spirited creature, braver than most birds, and a fair fighter, but against such a gang of feathered murderous ruffians, bent on his destruction, he would stand no chance.

The Tower sparrows, it may be added, appear to be about the worst specimens of their cla.s.s in London. They are always at war with the pigeons and starlings, and would gladly drive them out if they could.

It is a common thing for some foreign bird to escape from its cage on board s.h.i.+p and to take refuge in the trees and gardens of the Tower, but woe to the escaped captive and stranger in a strange land who seeks safety in such a place! Immediately on his arrival the sparrows are all up against him, not to 'heave half a brick at him,' since they are not made that way, but to hunt him from place to place until they have driven him, weak with fatigue and terror, into a corner where they can finish him with their bludgeon beaks.

This violence towards strangers of the Tower sparrow is not to be wondered at, since this unpleasant disposition or habit is common to many species. The prophet Jeremiah had observed it when he said, 'Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird, the birds round about are against her.' To the Tower sparrows every feathered stranger is conspicuously speckled, and they are against her. The wonder is that they should keep up their perpetual little teasing warfare against the pigeons and starlings, their neighbours from time immemorial. One would have imagined that so intelligent and practical a bird as the sparrow, after vainly trying for several centuries to drive out his fellow tenants, would have made peace with them and found some more profitable outlet for his superabundant energies. Possibly the introduction of a few feathered policemen--owls, or magpies, or sparrow hawks--would have the effect of making him a less quarrelsome neighbour.

In autumn and in spring a variety of summer visitants, mostly warblers, pa.s.s through London, delaying a little in its green s.p.a.ces. In September we are hardly cognisant of these small strangers within our gates, all but one or two being silent at that season. In April and May, in many of the parks, we may hear the chiffchaff, willow-wren, blackcap, sedge-warbler, the whitethroat, occasionally the cuckoo, and a few other rarer species, but they sing little, and soon leave us to seek better breeding-sites than the inner parks offer.

While some of our birds, as we have seen, forsake us at the approach of cold weather, some for a short period, others to remain away until the following spring, a small contrary movement of birds into London is going on. These winterers with us come not in battalions and are little remarked. They are to be found, a few here and a few there, all over London, wherever there are trees and bushes, but less in the public parks than in private grounds, cemeteries, and other quiet spots. Thus, during the last two exceptionally mild winters a few skylarks have lived contentedly in the comparatively small green area at Lambeth Palace.

Nunhead Cemetery is a favourite winter resort of a number of small birds--starlings, chaffinches, and greenfinches, and a few of other species. Chaffinches are found in winter in several of the open s.p.a.ces where they do not breed, and among other species to be found wintering in the quiet green spots in small numbers are linnets, goldfinches, pipits, and the pied wagtail.

In exceptionally severe winters birds come into London in considerable numbers--rooks, starlings, larks, blackbirds and thrushes, finches, and other small species--and they then visit not only the parks but all the squares and private gardens. During the big frost of 1890-1 skylarks were seen every day searching for food on the Thames Embankment. These strangers all vanish from London on the break-up of the frost.

During the late autumn and winter months a few large birds occasionally appear--heron, mallard, widgeon, teal, &c. As a rule they come and go during the dark hours. The sight of water and the cries of the ornamental water-fowl attract them. They are mostly irregular visitors, and cannot very well be included in the list of London birds.

The case of the black-headed gull is different, as this species may now be cla.s.sed with the regular visitors, and not merely to the outlying s.p.a.ces, like the fieldfare, but to the central parks of the metropolis, where, like the wood-pigeon, he looks to man for food.

The black-headed gull has always been a winter visitor in small numbers to the lower reaches of the Thames, coming up the river as far as London Bridge. In severe winters more birds come; thus, in the winter of 1887-8 they appeared in great numbers, and ranged as high up as Putney. The late Mr. Tristram-Valentine, in describing this visitation, wrote: 'It is seldom, indeed, that these birds appeared in such numbers in the Thames above London Bridge as they have done lately, and their appearance has, from its rarity, caused a corresponding excitement among Londoners, as is proved by the numbers of people that have crowded the bridges and embankments to watch their movements. To a considerable portion of these, no doubt, the marvellous flight and power of wing of the gull came as an absolute revelation.'

Gulls came up the river in still greater force during the exceptionally long and severe frost of 1892-3. That was a memorable season in the history of the London gulls. Then, for the last time, gulls were shot on the river between the bridges, and this pastime put a stop to by the police magistrates, who fined the sportsmen for the offence of discharging firearms to the public danger. And then for the first time, so far as I know, the custom of regularly feeding the gulls in London had its beginning. Every day for a period of three to four weeks hundreds of working men and boys would take advantage of the free hour at dinner time to visit the bridges and embankments, and give the sc.r.a.ps left from their meal to the birds. The sight of this midday crowd hurrying down to the waterside with welcome in their faces and food in their hands must have come 'as an absolute revelation' to the gulls.

During the memorable frost of 1894-5 the birds again appeared in immense numbers, and would doubtless have soon left us, or else perished of cold and hunger on the snow-covered hummocks of ice which filled the Thames and gave it so arctic an aspect, but for the quant.i.ties of food cast to them every day. As in previous years when gulls have visited the Thames in considerable numbers, many of the birds found their way into the parks, and were especially numerous in St. James's Park, where they formed the habit of feeding with the ornamental water-fowl.

We have since experienced three exceptionally mild winters, so that the gulls were not driven by want to invade us; but they have come to us nevertheless, not having forgotten the generous hospitality London extended to them in the frost. St. James's Park has now become the favourite wintering place of a considerable number of birds, and their habit is to spend the day on the lake, feeding on the broken bread and sc.r.a.ps of meat thrown to them from the bridge, and leaving about sunset to spend the night on the river. In the autumn of 1896, three or four days after the gulls began to appear on the Thames, a body of two or three hundred of these birds settled down in the park water, and fed there every day and all day long until the following spring--March 1897.

A favourite pastime of mine during the winter months was to feed these park gulls with sprats, which were plentiful and could be bought anywhere for one penny a pound, or in quant.i.ties for about a farthing the pound. Gulls cannot live by bread alone; it is true that even in London they do not, like the blubber-eating Greenlander, spew it out of their mouths, for they will eat almost anything, but it is not partaken of with zest, and even with a crop-full they do not feel that they have dined. However much bread they had had, no sooner would they see the silvery gleam of a little tossed-up sprat than there would be a universal scream of excitement, a rush from all sides, and the whole white vociferous crowd would be gathered before me, almost brus.h.i.+ng my face with their wings, sweeping round and round, joyfully feasting on the little fishes, cast to them in showers, to be deftly caught before they touched the water.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FEEDING THE GULLS IN ST. JAMES'S PARK]

Some of the birds, bolder or more intelligent than their fellows, would actually take the sprats from the hand.

A very few days before writing this chapter end, on January 30, 1898, I pa.s.sed by the water and saw the gulls there, where indeed they have spent most of the daylight hours since the first week in October. It was a rough wild morning; the hurrying ma.s.ses of dark cloud cast a gloom below that was like twilight; and though there was no mist the trees and buildings surrounding the park appeared vague and distant. The water, too, looked strange in its intense blackness, which was not hidden by the silver-grey light on the surface, for the surface was everywhere rent and broken by the wind, showing the blackness beneath. Some of the gulls--about 150 I thought--were on the water together in a close flock, tailing off to a point, all with their red beaks pointing one way to the gale. Seeing them thus, sitting high as their manner is, tossed up and down with the tumbling water, yet every bird keeping his place in the company, their whiteness and buoyancy in that dark setting was quite wonderful. It was a picture of black winter and beautiful wild bird life which would have had a rare attraction even in the desert places of the earth; in London it could not be witnessed without feelings of surprise and grat.i.tude.