50 LONDON BIRDS 



accept a couple of herrings for breakfast. A bird of 

 the same species, no doubt the same, was seen a few 

 days later on the Serpentine, and again flying over Lord's 

 Cricket Ground in a northerly direction. 'The bird,' 

 wrote Sir Ralph Payne-Galway, who recorded its last 

 appearance in the Times, 'flew fairly low, but owing, 

 I presume, to Mr. Bonnor having just put a ball into 

 the pavilion, it escaped notice as far as I could judge, 

 though it is true I heard one gentleman remark, " There 

 goes a wild Duck.'" The Cormorants permanently 

 quartered in St. James's Park, whose ' short and simple 

 annals' have been followed with kindly interest by 

 more than one reader of the Times, were brought from 

 the Megstone Rock, the most northerly of the group of 

 the outer Farne Islands, in the same year a few weeks 

 later. 



Neither their appetites nor their digestions suffered 

 by the change from the bracing air of Northumberland, 

 and a day or two after their arrival one of the party, at 

 the time barely two-thirds grown, after swallowing a 

 couple of haddocks, bolted a full-sized rat, just killed 

 and dropped accidentally near it, and at once opened 

 its beak to ask for more. They showed no signs of 

 breeding until 1892, when a pair, then in their fifth 

 year, took possession of a nest which had been prepared 

 for them, and one egg was laid. 



Under natural conditions a Cormorant's egg is strong- 

 shelled and so thickly coated with lime as to look often 

 less like a real egg than a carelessly-cut model in chalk. 

 The egg laid by the captive in 1892 was thin-shelled, 



