NORTH-WEST AND NORTH LONDON 181 



observed that the half-grown young birds assist 

 their parents in building a second nest and in 

 rearing the new brood, and it has also been re- 

 marked that when the young are fully grown 

 the old birds drive them from the pond. There 

 is room for only one pair in that small patch of 

 rushes, and they know it. The driven-out young 

 wander about in search of a suitable spot to 

 settle in, but find no place on the Heath. Pro- 

 bably some of them spend the winter in Lord 

 Mansfield's woods. A gentleman residing in the 

 neighbourhood told me that at the end of the 

 short frost in January 1897, when the ice was 

 melted, he saw one morning a large number of 

 moorhens, between thirty and forty, feeding in 

 the meadow near the ponds in Lord Mansfield's 

 grounds. 



I have been told that no rushes have been 

 planted on the Heath, and nothing done to en- 

 courage wild birds to settle at the ponds, simply 

 because it has never occurred to anyone in autho- 

 rity, and no person has ever suggested that it 

 would be a good thing to do. Now that the sug- 

 gestion is made, let us hope that it will receive 

 consideration, I fancy that every lover of nature 

 would agree that a pair or two of quaint pretty 



