2 London Birds. 



Childermas Day to the Calendar, but a nephew and 

 namesake only. 



London is no exception to the general rule. 

 Indeed, in some respects we are unusually favoured. 

 To begin with, there are, of course, the splendid 

 collections, dead and alive, in the British Museum 

 and Zoological Gardens. There are the bird-stuffers' 

 windows, into which a good proportion of the curious 

 birds shot in the kingdom are sure to find their way. 

 There are Leadenhall Market and the game-dealers' 

 shops, with constantly changing supplies all through 

 the year ; and, in hard weather, there are the wild- 

 fowl hawkers about the streets, with great bunches of 

 Stints, Curlews, and Oyster-catchers, doing duty as 

 Snipe and Woodcock, and Pochards and Mallard, 

 and Mergansers, " ancient and fish-like " enough to 

 be smelt across the street, with their tell-tale saw 

 beaks broken to make them Widgeon. 



But leaving these out of the question, there are the 

 genuine wild birds of London ; and it may, perhaps, 

 be a surprise to some readers to learn that a note- 

 book of those seen by one person in the course of not 

 more than a year in the immediate neighbourhood of 

 Hyde Park, all sufficiently near to be identified with- 

 out difficulty, included more than twenty species 

 representatives of five of the six great natural orders 

 into which birds are divided. 



The exception was the class of the " birds of prey," 

 the Raptores " low-foreheaded tyrants " the first in 

 scientific arrangement, but, according to a modern 

 writer, the lowest almost of all in everything but 

 brute force, because they can neither build nor sing. 



Wild birds of prey are not very common in 

 London, but, though it is not every one who is 

 fortunate enough to see them, members of both 



