Oil Birds in Towns.



97



BIRDS IN TOWNS.


By John Sergeant.


The ruralizing of towns by the gradual advance of bird

life from the country is an interesting study, and one to which I

have devoted some attention in the locality in which I live.


Southport, unlike many other towns, has been blessed by

far-seeing land-owners, who have made it a rule that each house

should occupy a certain area of land, and, as a consequence, most

of the gardens are large and the houses stand back from the

street, some of them embosomed amongst trees and shrubs. It

would, therefore, perhaps be conveying a wrong impression to

such of our members who do not know the town to designate it

as such, when the general idea conveyed by the term is one of

busy crowded thoroughfares, rows of shops, and terrace houses,

abutting close upon the street, and a smoke laden atmosphere ;

whereas here we have wide streets, the principal one planted

with trees, nearly all bordered by trees in the gardens on each

side, with privet hedges, grass lawns and flower borders galore,

and despite this a population of over 60,000. It is really a suburb,

but a suburb without the contaminating proximity of a city.


This explanation and little digression are necessary to

what I am about to say. About twenty-four years ago, when I

first began to take an interest in birds, in my school boy rambles,

I used to notice 011 the outskirts of Southport and Birkdale (its

sister township) such birds as Thrushes, Blackbirds, Robins,

Tits, Hedge Sparrows, etc., among the Starlings and Sparrows,

which we always have with us, and occasionally an odd bird or

two in the town itself; but year by year as the trees grow and the

hedges get thicker I find that there are more of them, and they

become bolder, penetrating farther and farther into the centre of

the town. On several mornings this year, on my walk down to

business, I saw or heard Blackbirds, Thrushes, Robins, Blue

Tits, Oxeye Tits, Cole Tits, Wrens, Starlings, a Bullfinch,

Chaffinches, Chiffchaffs, Hedge Sparrows, Green and Brown

Linnets, Swallows, Wagtails, and, as a climax, a lovely Willow

Wren and a Garden Warbler, both of the latter in the centre of

the town amongst the noise of the traffic. The Thrushes and



