LONDON BIRDS 9 



In spite of overshadowing soot, there is a considerable 

 variety to be noticed in the plumage of London Sparrows. 

 One spotted with white and another of unusually light 

 tint, very much the colour of a dormouse, have for more 

 than a year escaped the cats at the foot of the steps by 

 the Duke of York's column. Another, a cock bird, 

 with a tail of almost pure white, had, in the spring of 

 1892, his headquarters just inside the rails of the 

 Green Park, near Devonshire House, and since then 

 more or less speckled birds have become common in 

 the parks. 



Of the Buntings, the only two which figured in the 

 lists of birds seen within the year were a cock Yellow- 

 hammer, picked up dead in the Green Park, apparently 

 starved to death, and another seen in St. James's 

 Square. The latter was unluckily very tame, and paid 

 dearly for a meal in the gutter, only just managing to 

 flutter on to Lord Derby's house, much the worse for a 

 cut from a cabman's whip. 



In March and April 1890, the' ill-betiding croak' of 

 the Raven was a familiar sound to West-end Londoners ; 

 a fine fellow, who, judged by his tameness and by the 

 fact that several wing feathers were missing, was 

 probably an escaped captive, having for some weeks 

 settled in Kensington Gardens, where Carrion Crows 

 are fairly common and not afraid to make free with the 

 Ducks' eggs. Grey-backed Crows, too, are occasionally 

 to be seen. One was reported as ' stalking about the 

 beach at low tide at Chelsea ' in the Saturday Review 

 of March 1st, 1902. 



