34 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



birds were not in the hedges, they were in the corn 

 and stubble. After the nesting is well over and the 

 wheat is ripe the birds leave the hedges and go out 

 into the wheatfields ; at the same time the sparrows 

 quit the house-tops and gardens and do the same. At 

 the very time this complaint was raised, the stubbles 

 in Surrey, as I can vouch, were crowded with small 

 birds. 



If you walked across the stubble flocks of hundreds 

 rose out of your way; if you leant on a gate and 

 watched a few minutes you could see small flocks in 

 every quarter of the field rising and settling again. 

 These movements indicated a larger number in the 

 stubble there, for where a great flock is feeding some 

 few every now and then fly up restlessly. Earlier 

 than that in the summer there was not a wheat field 

 where you could not find numerous wheatears picked 

 as clean as if threshed where they stood. In some 

 places, the wheat was quite thinned. 



Later in the year there seems a movement of small 

 birds from the lower to the higher lands. One 

 December day I remember particularly visiting the 

 neighbourhood of Ewell, where the lands begin to rise 

 up towards the Downs. Certainly, I have seldom 

 seen such vast numbers of small birds. Up from the 

 stubble flew sparrows, chaffinches, greenfinches, 

 yellow-hammers, in such flocks that the low-cropped 

 hedge was covered with them. A second correspond- 

 ence appeared in the spring upon the same subject, 

 and again the scarcity of small birds was deplored. 



So far as the neighbourhood of London was con- 

 cerned, this was the exact reverse of the truth. 



