London Birds. 25 



pencilled Gadwall, one of the shiest and rarest of our 

 English waterfowl. 



The list includes, besides those already mentioned, 

 Mallard, common Teal, and Garganeys, Shovellers, 

 Pintails, the common Shelducks which breed in 

 the rabbit-holes among the sand-hills by the sea, 

 and the [ rarer " Ruddy " species, the tufted ; and, 

 perhaps most generally attractive of all, two or 

 three Golden-eyes, with their brilliant blue-black 

 and white plumage, and the eye, like a little drop 

 of liquid gold, which gives them their name. They 

 and the tufted and Red-headed Pochards are the life 

 of the party, and are scarcely still for a moment 

 together. It is amusing, in a general scramble for 

 bread from the bridge, to watch them diving under 

 the ruck, and popping up to snatch a crust from the 

 very mouth of some sleepy fellow twice their own 

 size, hunted in turn by half a dozen others as wide- 

 awake as themselves. 



Birds are many of them gifted with the lively 

 imagination which can keep a child happily amused 

 for an hour at a time with a cork on a bit of string 

 for a dog, or " pretenting to be mother." 



A year or two ago one of the Bernicle Geese in 

 St. James's Park no doubt with a history behind 

 her and not improbably with a shot in the ovary to 

 remind her of some " hair-breadth 'scape " on a frozen 

 marsh in by-gone days made a nest, and, without 

 laying an egg, sat the regulation number of weeks 

 on nothing more suggestive of goslings than the down 

 from her own breast with which she had carefully 

 lined it. 



The next year, a second nest was made in the same 

 spot, but this time the Providence which makes the 

 woman to whom such family delights had seemed 



D 



