24 BIRDS IN LONDON 



of British birds. It is to be hoped that when we 

 have got him his occasional small peccadilloes 

 will not be made too much of. 



The raven has long been lost to London, but 

 not so long as might be imagined when we 

 consider how nearly extinct this noble species, 

 as an inland breeder, now is in all the southern 

 half, and very nearly all the northern half, of 

 England. It is not my intention in this book to 

 go much into the past history of London bird 

 life, but I make an exception of the raven on 

 account of an extreme partiality for that most 

 human-like of feathered creatures. Down to 

 about the middle of last century, perhaps later, 

 the raven was a common London bird. He 

 was, after the kite had vanished, the principal 

 feathered scavenger, and it was said that a 

 London raven could easily be distinguished from 

 a country bird by his dulled or dusty-looking 

 plumage, the result of his food-seeking opera- 

 tions in dust and ash heaps. A little way out 

 of the metropolis he lingered on, as a breeding 

 species, down to within a little more than half 

 a century ago ; the last pair, so far as I can 

 discover, bred at Enfield down to about 1845. 



