LONDON BIRDS 25 



8th of May, and left in the direction of Park Lane. 

 Painful as it is to say unkind things of those we cannot 

 help liking and wish to respect, it is unhappily quite 

 impossible to deny that the Cuckoo is out of all 

 measure a disreputable bird. She begins life by 

 murdering her foster brothers and sisters, whom she 

 is pretty sure to shuffle one by one on to her hollow 

 back and pitch out of the nest before she is ready to 

 leave it herself. She grows up the charge is proved 

 beyond all question to think as lightly of marriage 

 vows as she does of a mother's duties. Excepting that 

 they have two toes in front and two behind the dis- 

 tinguishing feature of the class the Cuckoos have 

 little or nothing in common with the ' Climbers ' proper ; 

 but a visit from one of them would be just enough to 

 give us a claim to the Woodpeckers as a London 

 family, even if none of the true Woodpeckers were 

 ever to be seen. Stories are still occasionally told of 

 the little spotted Woodpecker, and more frequently of 

 the commoner Green Woodpecker, having been seen 

 in Kensington Gardens. Probably, at one time, both 

 may not have been uncommon there, but their visits 

 are now comparatively rare. A Green Woodpecker was 

 heard and seen in Hyde Park in November 1885. 



The birds of the Old World, as well as the ' two-legged 

 creatures without feathers,' are left behind by their 

 more go-ahead American cousins. 



There is a Californian Woodpecker which is not con- 

 tent with making holes in trees, after the manner of 

 its kind on this side of the Atlantic, but corks them 



