London Birds. 29 



Pond. They came and went unaccountably, and 

 within a few days the place was alive with them 

 and deserted again. As a rule, though, there were 

 ten or a dozen at least to be seen feeding toler- 

 ably near the edge. They were then common, too, 

 on the other waters in the parks. For the last 

 few years six or seven pairs have bred regularly in 

 St. James's Park. They commonly arrive late in 

 March or early in April, and disappear with their 

 families before the end of October. A nest built in 

 1887, in an exposed place, was, after it was finished, 

 cut from its original moorings by the builders and 

 towed a yard or two to a more secluded corner under 

 an overhanging bush. Unluckily the second lashings 

 were not so strong as they should have been, and, a 

 fresh breeze springing up, the raft was wrecked and 

 the four eggs it carried went to the bottom. After 

 a sudden sharp frost in March, 1892, a Dabchick 

 a genuinely wild bird in good plumage was found in 

 a shallow puddle in the bed of the ornamental water, 

 which had been run dry for cleaning, with one foot 

 caught in the ice. 



In the spring of 1883, after a spell of windy 

 weather, a Willock another of the " Brevipennes " 

 was caught alive in Russell Square. Why he 

 came there, unless to prove his title to his other 

 name, " the foolish Guillemot," it is not easy to 

 say. It is a common thing to pick such birds up 

 by twos and threes dead on the beach almost any- 

 where along the coast if it has been blowing hard 

 on shore for any length of time. 



They, and Razorbills, which, excepting in the 

 form of the beak, are very much like them, are the 

 commonest of the black and white birds which, on 

 almost any voyage northward more particularly 



