Birds in London Part 1

Birds in London.

by W. H. Hudson.

PREFACE

The opening chapter contains, by way of introduction, all that need be said concerning the object and scope of this work; it remains to say here that, as my aim has been to furnish an account of the London wild bird life of to-day, there was little help to be had from the writings of previous observers. These mostly deal with the central parks, and are interesting now, mainly, as showing the changes that have taken place.

At the end of the volume a list will be found of the papers and books on the subject which are known to me. This list will strike many readers as an exceedingly meagre one, when it is remembered that London has always been a home of ornithologists--that from the days of Oliver Goldsmith, who wrote pleasantly of the Temple Gardens rookery, and of Thomas Pennant and his friend Daines Barrington, there have never been wanting observers of the wild bird life within our gates: The fact remains that, with the exception of a few incidental pa.s.sages to be found in various ornithological works, nothing was expressly written about the birds of London until James Jennings's 'Ornithologia' saw the light a little over seventy years ago. Jennings's work was a poem, probably the worst ever written in the English language; but as he inserted copious notes, fortunately in prose, embodying his own observations on the bird life of east and south-east London, the book has a very considerable interest for us to-day. Nothing more of importance appeared until the late Shirley Hibberd's lively paper on 'London Birds' in 1865. From that date onward the subject has attracted an increased attention, and at present we have a number of London or park naturalists, as they might be called, who view the resident London species as adapted to an urban life, and who chronicle their observations in the 'Field,' 'Nature,' 'Zoologist,'

'Nature Notes,' and other natural history journals, and in the newspapers and magazines.

To return to the present work. Treating of actualities I have been obliged for the most part to gather my own materials, relying perhaps too much on my own observation; since London is now too vast a field for any person, however diligent, to know it intimately in all its extent.

Probably any reader who is an observer of birds on his own account, and has resided for some years near a park or other open s.p.a.ce in London, will be able to say, by way of criticism, that I have omitted some important or interesting fact known to him--something that ought to have had a place in a work of this kind. In such a case I can only plead either that the fact was not known to me, or that I had some good reason for not using it. Moreover, there is a limit to the amount of matter which can be included in a book of this kind, and a selection had to be made from a large number of facts and anecdotes I had got together.

All the matter contained in this book, with the exception of one article, or part of an article, on London birds, in the 'Sat.u.r.day Review,' now appears for the first time.

In conclusion, I have to express my warm thanks to those who have helped me in my task, by supplying me with fresh information, and in other ways.

W. H. H.

LONDON: _April_, 1898.

CHAPTER I

THE BIRDS AND THE BOOK

A handbook of London birds considered--Reasons for not writing it--Changes in the character of the wild bird population, and supposed cause--The London sparrow--Its abundance--Bread-begging habits--Monotony--Its best appearance--Beautiful finches--Value of open s.p.a.ces--The sparrows' afternoon tea in Hyde Park--Purpose of this book.

Among the many little schemes and more or less good intentions which have flitted about my brain like summer flies in a room, there was one for a small volume on London birds; to contain, for princ.i.p.al matter, lists of the species resident throughout the year, of the visitants, regular and occasional, and of the vanished species which have inhabited the metropolis in recent, former, or historical times. For everyone, even the veriest Dryasdust among us, has some glow of poetic feeling in him, some lingering regret for the beautiful that has vanished and returneth not; consequently, it would be hard in treating of London bird life not to go back to times which now seem very ancient, when the kite was common--the city's soaring scavenger, protected by law, just as the infinitely less attractive turkey-buzzard is now protected in some towns of the western world. Again, thanks to Mr. Harting's researches into old records, we have the account of beautiful white spoonbills, a.s.sociated with herons, building their nests on the tree-tops in the Bishop of London's grounds at Fulham.

To leave this fascinating theme. It struck me at first that the book vaguely contemplated might be made useful to lovers and students of bird life in London; and I was also encouraged by the thought that the considerable amount of printed material which exists relating to the subject would make the task of writing it comparatively easy.

But I no sooner looked attentively into the subject than I saw how difficult it really was, and how unsatisfactory, and I might almost add useless, the work would prove.

To begin with, what is London? It is a very big town, a 'province covered with houses'; but for the ornithologist where, on any side, does the province end? Does it end five miles south of Charing Cross, at Sydenham, or ten miles further afield, at Downe? Or, looking north, do we draw the line at Hampstead, or Aldenham? The whole metropolitan area has, let us say, a circ.u.mference of about ninety miles, and within its outermost irregular boundary there is room for half a dozen concentric lines, each of which will contain a London, differing greatly in size and, in a much less degree, in character. If the list be made to include all the birds found in such rural and even wild places--woods, thickets, heaths, and marshes--as exist within a sixteen-mile radius, it is clear that most of the inland species found in the counties of Kent, Surrey, Middles.e.x, Hertfordshire, and Ess.e.x would be in it.

The fact is, in drawing up a list of London birds, the writer can, within limits, make it as long or short as he thinks proper. Thus, if he wishes to have a long list, and is partial to round numbers, he will be able to get a century of species by making his own twelve or thirteen mile radius. Should he then alter his mind, and think that a modest fifty would content him, all he would have to do to get that number would be to contract his line, bringing it somewhere near the indeterminate borders of inner London, where town and country mix or pa.s.s into each other. Now a handbook written on this plan would be useful only if a very exact boundary were drawn, and the precise locality given in which each resident or breeding species had its haunts, where the student or lover of birds could watch or listen for it with some chance of being rewarded. Even so, the book would not serve its purpose for a longer period than two or three years; after three years it would most certainly be out of date, so great and continuous is the growth of London on all sides. Thus, going round London, keeping to that partly green indeterminate borderland already mentioned, there are many little hidden rustic spots where in the summer of 1897 the woodp.e.c.k.e.r, green and spotted, and the nuthatch and tree-creeper bred; also the nightingale, bottle-t.i.t, and wryneck, and jay and crow, and kestrel and white and brown owl; but who can say that they will breed in the same places in 1899, or even in 1898? For these little green rustic refuges are situated on the lower slopes of a volcano, which is always in a state of eruption, and year by year they are being burnt up and obliterated by ashes and lava.

After I had at once and for ever dropped, for the reasons stated, all idea of a handbook, the thought remained that there was still much to be said about London bird life which might be useful, although in another way. The subject was often in my mind during the summer months of 1896 and 1897, which, for my sins, I was compelled to spend in town. During this wasted and dreary period, when I was often in the parks and open s.p.a.ces in all parts of London, I was impressed more than I had been before with the changes constantly going on in the character of the bird population of the metropolis. These changes are not rapid enough to show a marked difference in a s.p.a.ce of two or three years; but when we take a period of fifteen or twenty years, they strike us as really very great.

They are the result of the gradual decrease in numbers and final dying out of many of the old-established species, chiefly singing birds, and, at the same time, the appearance of other species previously unknown in London, and their increase and diffusion. Considering these two facts, one is inclined to say off-hand that the diminution or dying out of one set of species is simply due to the fact that they are incapable of thriving in the conditions in which they are placed; that the London smoke is fatal in the long run to some of the more delicate birds, as it undoubtedly is to the rose and other plants that require pure air and plenty of sunshine; and that, on the other hand, the new colonists that are increasing are species of a coa.r.s.er fibre, greater vitality, and able, like the plane-tree in the plant world, to thrive in such conditions. It is really not so: the t.i.ts and finches, the robin, wren, hedge-sparrow, pied wagtail, some of the warblers, and the missel-thrush, are as vigorous and well able to live in London as the wood-pigeon. They are, moreover, very much more prolific than the pigeon, and find their food with greater ease. Yet we see that these lively, active species are dying out, while the slow, heavy dove, which must eat largely to live, and lays but two eggs on a frail platform of sticks for nest, is rapidly increasing.

Here then, it seemed, was a subject which it might be for the advantage of the bird-lovers in London to consider; and I write in the conviction that there are as many Londoners who love the sight and sound of wild bird life as there are who find refreshment in trees and gra.s.s and flowers, who are made glad by the sight of a blue sky, to whom the sunshine is sweet and pleasant to behold.

In going about London, after my mind had begun to dwell on this subject, I was frequently amused, and sometimes teased, by the sight and sound of the everywhere-present mult.i.tudinous sparrow. In London there are no grain-growers and market-gardeners, consequently there is no tiresome sparrow question, and no sparrow-clubs to vex the tender-hearted. These sparrows were not to be thought about in their relation to agriculture, but were simply little birds, too often, in many a weary mile, in many an unlovely district, the only representatives of the avian cla.s.s, flying to and fro, chirping and chirruping from dawn to dark; nor birds only: I had them also for b.u.t.terflies, seen sometimes in crowds and clouds, as in the tropics, with no rich nor splendid colouring on their wings; and I had them for cicadas, and noisy locusts of arboreal habits, hundreds and thousands of them, whirring in a subdued way in the park trees during the sultry hours. They were all these things and scavengers as well, ever busy at their scavengering in the dusty and noisy ways; everywhere finding some organic matter to comfort their little stomachs, or to carry to their nestlings.

At times the fanciful idea would occur to me that I was on a commission appointed to inquire into the state of the wild bird life of London, or some such subject, and that my fellow commissioners were sparrows, so incessantly were they with me, though in greatly varying numbers, during my perambulations.

After all, the notion that they attended or accompanied me in my walks was not wholly fanciful. For no sooner does any person enter any public garden or park, or other open s.p.a.ce where there are trees, than, if he be not too absorbed in his own thoughts, he will see that several sparrows are keeping him company, flying from tree to tree, or bush to bush, alighting occasionally on the ground near him, watching his every movement; and if he sit down on a chair or bench several of them will come close to him, and hop this way and that before him, uttering a little plaintive note of interrogation--_Have you got nothing for us?_ They have come to look on every human being who walks among the park trees and round the garden-beds as a mere perambulating machine for the distribution of fragments of bread. The sparrow's theory or philosophy of life, from our point of view, is very ridiculous, but he finds it profitable, and wants no better.

I remember that during those days, when the little creatures were so much with me, whether I wanted them or no, some person wrote to one of the newspapers to say that he had just made the acquaintance of the common sparrow in a new character. The sparrow was and always had been a familiar bird to him, but he had never previously seen it gathered in crowds at its 'afternoon tea' in Hyde Park, a spectacle which he had now witnessed with surprise and pleasure.

If (I thought) this innumerous feathered company could only be varied somewhat, the modest plumage retouched, by Nature, with harmonious olive green and yellow tints, pure greys and pure browns, with rose, carmine, tile and chestnut reds; and if the monotonous little burly forms could be reshaped, and made in some cases larger, in others smaller, some burlier still and others slimmer, more delicate and aerial in appearance, the spectacle of their afternoon tea would be infinitely more attractive and refreshing than it now is to many a Londoner's tired eyes.

Their voices, too--for the refashioned mixed crowd would have a various language, like the species that warble and twitter and call musically to one another in orchard and copse--would give a new and strange delight to the listener.

No doubt the sparrow is, to quote the letter-writer's expression, 'a jolly little fellow,' quite friendly with his supposed enemy man, amusing in his tea-table manners, and deserving of all the praise and crumbs we give him. He is even more. To those who have watched him begging for and deftly catching small sc.r.a.ps of bread, suspended like a hawk-moth in the air before the giving hand, displaying his conspicuous black gorget and the pale ash colour of his under surface, while his rapidly vibrating wings are made silky and translucent by the sunlight pa.s.sing through them, he appears, indeed, a pretty and even graceful creature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PARK SPARROW BEGGING]

But he is, after all, only a common sparrow, a mean representative of bird life in our midst; in all the aesthetic qualities which make birds charming--beauty of form and colour, grace of motion, and melody--less than the least of the others. Therefore to greatly praise him is to publish our ignorance, or, at all events, to make it appear that he is admired because, being numerous and familiar with man, he has been closely and well looked at, while the wilder and less common species have only been seen at a distance, and therefore indistinctly.

A distinguished American writer on birds once visited England in order to make the acquaintance of our most noted feathered people, and in his haste p.r.o.nounced the chaffinch the 'prettiest British songster.'

Doubtless he had seen it oftenest, and closely, and at its best; but he would never have expressed such an opinion if he had properly seen many other British singing birds; if, for instance (confining ourselves to the fringilline family), he had seen his 'shilfa's' nearest relation, the brambling, in his black dress beautifully variegated with buff and brown; or the many-coloured cirl-bunting; or that golden image of a bird, the yellowhammer; or the green siskin, 'that lovely little oddity,' seeking his food, t.i.t-like, among the pine needles, or clinging to pendulous twigs; or the linnet in his spring plumage--pale grey and richest brown and carmine--singing among the flowery gorse; or the goldfinch, flitting amidst the apple-bloom in May, or feeding on the thistle in July and August, clinging to the downy heads, twittering as he pa.s.ses from plant to plant, showing his gay livery of crimson, black, and gold; or the sedentary bullfinch, a miniature hawk in appearance, with a wonderful rose-coloured breast, sitting among the cl.u.s.tering leaves of a dark evergreen--yew or holly.

Beautiful birds are all these, and there are others just as beautiful in other pa.s.serine families, but alas! they are at a distance from us; they live in the country, and it is only that small 'whiff of the country'

to be enjoyed in a public park which fate allows to the majority of Londoners, the many thousands of toilers from year's end to year's end, and their wives and children.

To those of us who take an annual holiday, and, in addition, an occasional run in the country, or who are not bound to town, it is hardly possible to imagine how much is meant by that little daily or weekly visit to a park. Its value to the confined millions has accordingly never been, and probably cannot be, rightly estimated.

For the poor who have not those periods of refreshment which others consider so necessary to their health and contentment, the change from the close, adulterated atmosphere of the workshop and the living-room, and stone-paved noisy street, to the open, green, comparatively quiet park, is indeed great, and its benefit to body and mind incalculable.

The sight of the sun; of the sky, no longer a narrow strip, but wide, infinite over all; the freshness of the unconfined air which the lungs drink in; the green expanse of earth, and large trees standing apart, away from houses--all this produces a shock of strange pleasure and quickens the tired pulse with sudden access of life. In a small way--sad it is to think in how small a way!--it is a return to nature, an escape for the moment from the prison and sick-room of unnatural conditions; and the larger and less artificial the park or open s.p.a.ce, and the more abounding in wild, especially bird, life, the more restorative is the effect.

It is indeed invariably the animal life which exercises the greatest attraction and is most exhilarating. It is really pathetic to see how many persons of the working cla.s.s come every day, all the year round, but especially in the summer months, to that minute transcript of wild nature in Hyde Park at the spot called the Dell, where the Serpentine ends. They are drawn thither by the birds--the mult.i.tude of sparrows that gather to be fed, and the wood-pigeons, and a few moorhens that live in the rushes.

'I call these my chickens, and I'm obliged to come every day to feed them,' said a paralytic-looking white-haired old man in the shabbiest clothes, one evening as I stood there; then, taking some fragments of stale bread from his pockets, he began feeding the sparrows, and while doing so he chuckled with delight, and looked round from time to time to see if the others were enjoying the spectacle.

To him succeeded two sedate-looking labourers, big, strong men, with tired, dusty faces, on their way home from work. Each produced from his coat-pocket a little store of fragments of bread and meat, saved from the midday meal, carefully wrapped up in a piece of newspaper. After bestowing their sc.r.a.ps on the little brown-coated crowd, one spoke: 'Come on, mate, they've had it all, and now let's go home and see what the missus has got for _our_ tea'; and home they trudged across the park, with hearts refreshed and lightened, no doubt, to be succeeded by others and still others, London workmen and their wives and children, until the sun had set and the birds were all gone.

Here then is an object lesson which no person who is capable of reading the emotions in the countenance, who has any sympathy with his fellow-creatures, can fail to be impressed by. Not only at that spot in Hyde Park may it be seen, but at all the parks and open s.p.a.ces in London; in some more than others, as at St. James's Park, where the gulls are fed during the winter months, and at Battersea and Regent's Parks, where the starlings congregate every evening in July and August.

What we see is the perpetual hunger of the heart and craving of those who are compelled to live apart from Nature, who have only these momentary glimpses of her face, and of the refreshment they experience at sight of trees and gra.s.s and water, and, above everything, of wild and glad animal life. How important, then, that the most should be made of our few suitable open s.p.a.ces; that everything possible should be done to maintain in them an abundant and varied wild bird life!

Unfortunately, this has not been seen, else we should not have lost so much, especially in the royal parks. In some of the parks under the County Council there are great signs of improvement, an evident anxiety to protect and increase the stock of wild birds; but even here the most zealous of the superintendents are not fully conscious of the value of what they are themselves doing. They are encouraging the wild birds because they are considered 'ornaments' to the park, just as they plant rhododendrons and other exotic shrubs that have big gaily-coloured flowers in their season, and as they exhibit some foreign bird of gorgeous plumage in the park aviary. They have not yet grasped the fact--I hope Mr. s.e.xby, the excellent head of the parks department, will pardon my saying it--that the feathered inhabitants of our open s.p.a.ces are something more than 'ornaments'; that the sight and sound of any wild bird, from the croaking carrion crow to the small lyrical kitty wren or tinkling tomt.i.t, will afford more pleasure to the Londoner--in other words, conduce more to his health and happiness--than all the gold pheasants and other brightly-apparelled prisoners, native and foreign, to be seen in the park cages.

From the foregoing it will be seen that this little book, which comes in place of the one I had, in a vague way, once thought of writing, is in some degree a book with a purpose. Birds are not considered merely as objects of interest to the ornithologist and to a few other persons--objects or creatures which the great ma.s.s of the people of the metropolis have really nothing to do with, and vaguely regard as something at a distance, of no practical import, or as wholly unrelated to their urban life. Rather they are considered as a necessary part of those pleasure- and health-giving transcripts of nature which we retain and cherish as our best possessions--the open sun-lit and tree-shaded s.p.a.ces, green with gra.s.s and bright with water; so important a part indeed, as bringing home to us that glad freedom and wildness which is our best medicine, that without it all the rest would lose much of its virtue.

But on this point--the extreme pleasure which the confined Londoner experiences in seeing and hearing wild birds, and the consequent value of our wild bird life--enough has been said in this place, as it will be necessary to return to the subject in one of the concluding chapters.