RECENT COLONISTS 97 



nest in ; and wherever these are fonnd, however 

 small the pond may be, there the moorhen will 

 live very contentedly. 



A very few years ago ic would have been a 

 wild thing to say that the little grebe was a 

 suitable bird for London, and if some wise 

 ornithologist had prophesied its advent how we 

 should all have laughed at him ! For how 

 should this timid feeble-winged wanderer be able 

 to come and go, finding its way to and from its 

 chosen park, in this large province covered with 

 houses, by night, through the network of 

 treacherous telegraph wires, in a lurid atmo- 

 sphere, frightened by strange noises and con- 

 fused by the glare of innumerable lamps ? Of 

 birds that get their living from the water, it 

 would have seemed safer to look for the coming 

 (as colonists) of the common sandpiper, king- 

 fisher, coot, widgeon, teal : all these, also the 

 heron and cormorant, are occasional visitors to 

 inner London, and it is to be hoped that some 

 of them will in time become permanent addi- 

 tions to the wild bird life of the metropolis. 



The little grebe, before it formed a settlement, 

 was also an occasional visitor during its spring 



II 



