Nature on the Roof 



written will ever keep a starling in a cage ; the cruelty 

 is extreme. As for shooting pigeons at a trap, it is 

 mercy in comparison. 



Even before the starling whistles much, the 

 sparrows begin to chirp: in the dead of winter they 

 are silent ; but so soon as the warmer winds blow, if 

 only for a day, they begin to chirp. In January this 

 year I used to listen to the sparrows chirping, the 

 starlings whistling, and the chaffinches' " chink, 

 chink " about eight o'clock, or earlier, in the morning: 

 the first two on the roof; the latter, which is not a 

 roof -bird, in some garden shrubs. As the spring 

 advances, the sparrows sing it is a short song, it is 

 true, but still it is singing perched at the edge of a 

 sunny wall. There is not a place about the house 

 where they will not build under the eaves, on the 

 roof, anywhere where there is a projection or shelter, 

 deep in the thatch, under the tiles, in old eave- 

 swallows' nest. The last place I noticed as a favourite 

 one in towns is on the half-bricks left projecting in 

 perpendicular rows at the sides of unfinished houses. 

 Half a dozen nests may be counted at the side of a 

 house on these bricks; and like the starlings, they rear 

 several broods, and some are nesting late in the 

 autumn. By degrees as the summer advances they 

 leave the houses for the corn, and gather in vast flocks, 

 rivalling those of the starlings. At this time they 

 desert the roofs, except those who still have nesting 

 duties. In winter and in the beginning of the new 

 year, they gradually return; migration thus goes on 

 under the eyes of those who care to notice it. In 

 London, some who fed sparrows on the roof found that 

 rooks also came for the crumbs placed out. I some- 

 times see a sparrow chasing a rook, as if angry, and 

 trying to drive it away over the roofs where I live, 



81 F 



