1 6 London Birds. 



otherwise certainly have been surprised sleeping, and 

 cut to pieces " by the Popish Irish." 



" For this reason," says Aubrey, who tells the tale 

 in his Miscellanies, "the wild Irish mortally hate these 

 birds, to this day calling them Devil's Servants, and 

 killing them whenever they catch them." 



The sympathy of the Lapwings seems to have been 

 as strongly on the other side. They were for the 

 High Church party, and made themselves hated for 

 generations in the lowlands of Scotland as much as 

 were the Wrens in Ireland, by disturbing the devo- 

 tions of the Covenanters, and meanly betraying them 

 again and again to the Duke of York and Commis- 

 sioner Middleton's men, by shrieking on every possible 

 occasion over the lonely meeting-places on the hill- 

 sides. 



The golden-crested Wren has occasionally, but not 

 often, been seen on the peninsula in St. James's Park. 



A few Robins, and a Lark, seen on two consecutive 

 days in Hyde Park and the Green Park, complete the 

 list of the Sparrow family in the year's notes on 

 which this chapter is based, though there is no doubt 

 that, with a little longer observation, a great many 

 others might have been added. A Night-jar attended 

 one of the evening performances of Buffalo Bill, 

 hawking about for some time near the seats of the 

 other spectators, at the end of May, 1 892. 



The " climbers " are not well represented, the only 

 one that was noted during the year being a single 

 vagabond Cuckoo, who found his way into Hyde 

 Park on the 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 



