30 NATURE NEAR LONDON 



with them. A second correspondence appeared in the 

 spring upon the same subject, and again the scarcity 

 of small birds was deplored. 



So far as the neighbourhood of London was con- 

 cerned, this was the exact reverse of the truth. 



Small birds swarmed, as I have already stated, in 

 every ploughed field. All the birdcatchers in London 

 with traps and nets and limed twigs could never make 

 the slightest appreciable difference to such flocks. I 

 have always expressed my detestation of the bird- 

 catcher ; but it is founded on other grounds, and not 

 from any fear of the diminution of numbers only. 

 Where the birdcatcher does inflict irretrievable injury 

 is in this way a bird, say a nightingale, say a gold- 

 finch, has had a nest for years in the corner of a 

 garden, or an apple-tree in an orchard. The bird- 

 catcher presently decoys one or other of these, and 

 thenceforward the spot is deserted. The song is 

 heard no more; the nest never again rebuilt. 



The first spring I resided in Surrey I was fairly 

 astonished and delighted at the bird life which 

 proclaimed itself everywhere. The bevies of chiffchaffs 

 and willow wrens which came to the thickets in the 

 furze, the chorus of thrushes and blackbirds, the 

 chaffinches in the elms, the greenfinches in the hedges, 

 wood-pigeons and turtle-doves in the copses, tree-pipits 

 about the oaks in the cornfields; every bush, every 

 tree, almost every clod, for the larks were so many, 

 seemed to have its songster. As for nightingales, I 

 never knew so many in the most secluded country. 



There are more round about London than in all the 

 woodlands I used to ramble through. When people 

 go into the country they really leave the birds behind 

 them. It was the same, I found, after longer observa- 



