32 LONDON BIRDS 



about, jerking their tails or prying about shyly for 

 what they can find on the grass outside the little cover 

 by the water's edge. It is impossible to help believing 

 that a Moorhen has an eye for natural beauties, and 

 chooses the overhanging bough or fallen tree by the 

 water for her nest for picturesqueness quite as much 

 as for convenience. 



More than one Moorhen has been picked up on the 

 premises of the Public Record Office, in Chancery 

 Lane. It is not necessary to look far for the explana- 

 tion, as the sky overhead is spider-webbed with tele- 

 graph wires running in every direction. 



It is interesting to notice how soon resident birds 

 learn the danger of the wires. When a line was first 

 put up for a few miles along the coast from Cromer, 

 Patridges, and small birds Larks particularly were 

 constantly picked up more or less mutilated; but, 

 before the wires had been up many months, it was 

 a rare thing to find a wounded bird. 



Herons occasionally fly over London; but it is not 

 likely that they often alight. Like most aboriginal 

 tribes, they are gradually dwindling away before the 

 progress of civilisation ; and our grandchildren, if they 

 wish to see them wild, may have to go to the Dutch 

 ditches or the unreclaimable swamps of America. 



According to Michelet, whose delightful little book, 

 L'Oiseau, all bird-lovers should read, the Heron knows 

 he is the degenerate representative of a dethroned 

 race of kings, and mopes in solitude, dreaming of the 

 days of his glory, when his ancestors, the giant Waders 



