40 BIRDS IN LONDON 



hatched young along the thronged pavements 

 of Kensington High Street has been witnessed. 



When the young have been hatched in a tree 

 the parent bird takes them up in her beak and 

 drops them one by one to the ground, and the 

 fall does not appear to hurt them. Last year a 

 duck bred in a tree broken off at the top near 

 St. Gover's Well, in the gardens. One morning 

 she appeared with four ducklings, and leaving 

 them near the pond went back to the tree and 

 in time returned with a second lot of four. Still 

 she was not satisfied, but continued to go back 

 to the tree and to fly round and round it with a 

 great clamour. A keeper who had been watching 

 her movements sent for a man with a ladder to 

 have the tree-top examined. The man found 

 the broken stem hollow at the top, and by 

 thrusting his arm down shoulder-deep was able 

 to reach the bottom of the cavity with his hand. 

 One duckling was found in it and rescued, and 

 its mother made happy. That she had suc- 

 ceeded in getting all the others out of so 

 deep and narrow a shaft seemed very as- 

 tonishing. 



An extraordinary incident relating to these 

 Kensington ducks was told to me by one of the 



