50 THE NOTEBOOK OF A CITY NATUEALIST. 



others the yellow and pied wagtails, yellow-hammer, white- 

 throat, redstart, fly-catcher, butcher-bird, and meadow-pipit. 



Walking up the lane, we are accompanied by a merry 

 troop of long-tailed tits, scouring the thick quickset hedge, 

 and at the top of the lane we just miss the Stanton Drew 

 Harriers in full cry after a hare which made good her 

 escape. 



Close by is the home of the moorhen, kingfisher, stock- 

 dove, turtle-dove, wood-pigeon, blackcap, nightingale, and 

 other warblers, as well as of the bullfinch, brown linnet, and 

 other finches, and the green and great spotted woodpeckers. 

 In the field on the right of the lane is a large flock of lap- 

 wings, and we notice a flock of sheep with young lambs, so 

 different in appearance from their parents and the older 

 lambs in the adjoining field. 



Why has not mutilation for centuries effected the curtail- 

 ment of the tail ? Operation during two or three generations 

 was to produce marvellous results in some of the monkeys, 

 according to some recent American scientific investigators. 



Coming down Kensington Hill, we notice another colony 

 of sand-martins nesting under different circumstances be- 

 tween the stones of a roughly built wall ; and at the turn 

 of the road, on December 24fch, '94, at 4 p.m., we see a 

 bat noiselessly flitting by. Overhead a heron, with slow 

 flapping, short broad wings, speeds homewards to Brockley. 



Arrived at the cemetery gates, we pass through the home 

 of many birds : green woodpecker nesting here five years 

 since, wdllow-wren, and chiffchaff, fly-catcher, redstart, 

 finches of various sorts, butcher-bird, wagtails, meadow-pipit, 

 lark, cuckoo, great, blue and cole-tits. 



Passing out at the top gates and down past the old Bush 

 Hotel into St. John's Lane, we start a hare in the allotment 

 grounds, and walking through the lane we flush snipe and 



