LONDON BIRDS 3 



the family, night fliers and day fliers, are occasionally 

 to be seen. 



There was a report in the summer of 1891 that an 

 Eagle had been seen over the East-end of London, and 

 again, during a severe frost in February 1895, that a 

 pair, at a considerable height, but not too far off for 

 fairly certain recognition, were observed working in 

 circles westward over Westminster. 



Neither rumour was confirmed ; but the first is all 

 the more likely to have been true, as a day or so before 

 a big bird of the kind, which, from the description 

 given, must have been an Eagle, was seen, heading 

 northwards, by two gentlemen fishing in the Stour, at 

 Chartham, a few miles above Canterbury. It was 

 probably a young ' whitetailed,' which, in a first trek 

 south had succeeded in running the gauntlet of Norfolk 

 gamekeepers, and following the line of the coast, after 

 the manner of its kind, had turned up the estuary of 

 the Thames. 



London, improbable as it may seem, is, geographi- 

 cally, a place where occasional appearances of an Eagle 

 might naturally be looked for. 



Dr. Edward Hamilton, who published in the Zoologist 

 in 1879 a carefully compiled paper on ' The Birds of 

 London, Past and Present, Resident and Casual,' 1 

 numbering in all nearly a hundred, says that ' in 1859 

 a Kite was observed flying over Piccadilly not above 

 one hundred yards high,' and mentions as 'casual 



1 A list of the birds noticed in London, based on Dr. Hamilton's 

 paper, is printed as an appendix. 



