338 



AUTUMN AND WINTER 



to be seen later in the day. The moorhens and dabchicks 

 and mallard on the park waters are recruited on the spring 

 migration by wild birds, so that it is by this time hard to say 

 whether the park stocks should be regarded as wild or tame. 

 These three species have certainly a better title as wild birds 

 than the city house-pigeons ; and it seems likely that some of 

 the tufted ducks on park waters are wild birds from some of 

 the lakes and reservoirs where they are yearly growing more 

 numerous. Sheets of water are an attraction to most birds 

 on migration, from the food of all kinds usually to be found 



RAZORBILLS 



in, beside, and above them. In bitterly cold springs, large 

 parties of swallows and house-martins and sand-martins are 

 sometimes seen circling for flies above the Round Pond and 

 Serpentine, though it is to be feared that they find little to 

 feed on. The same species, and also swifts, hunt now and 

 then in wet and stormy Septembers along the plane-trees on 

 the Chelsea Embankment. But swifts and birds of the 

 swallow tribe are now only visitors, though not rare visitors, 

 to central London. House-martins clung for a long time to 

 nesting-haunts in a few of the airier streets, but have left 

 them for many years. We do not wake in London to hear 

 the screaming swifts betoken a sunny morning, as one does 

 under the purer skies of Paris, though they can sometimes 

 be seen in fine summer weather. But London gains many 



