2 LONDON BIRDS 



London is no exception to the rule. Indeed, in 

 some respects we are unusually favoured. To begin 

 with, there are, of course, the splendid collections, dead 

 and alive, in the British Museum and Zoological 

 Gardens, There are the bird-stufFers' windows, into 

 which a good proportion of the curious birds shot in 

 the kingdom are sure to find their way. There are 

 Leadenhall Market and the game-dealers' shops, with 

 constantly changing supplies all through the year; 

 and, in hard weather, there are the wild-fowl hawkers 

 about the streets, with great bunches of Stints, 

 Curlews and Guillemots, doing duty as Snipe and 

 Widgeon, and Mergansers, ' ancient and fish-like ' 

 enough to be smelt across the street, with their tell- 

 tale saw beaks broken off to make them Mallard. 



But leaving these out of the question, there are the 

 genuine wild birds of London ; and it may, perhaps, be 

 a surprise to some readers to learn how many of these 

 there are. A notebook of those seen by one person 

 in the course of not more than a year in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of Hyde Park, all sufficiently near to be 

 identified without difficulty, included more than twenty 

 species representatives of five of the six great natural 

 orders into which birds are divided. 



The exception was the class of the ' birds of prey/ 

 the Raptores ' low-foreheaded tyrants ' the first until 

 lately in scientific arrangements, but now dethroned. 



Wild birds of prey are not very common in London, 

 but, though it is not every one who is fortunate 

 enough to see them, members of both branches of 



