BIRD-HAUNTED LONDON 95 



made them comical and dignified, grotesque and 

 superbly beautiful simultaneously, but here the scales 

 were tipped the wrong way. None the less, they were 

 comparatively happy and not gaoled in the Zoo, what- 

 ever their limitations. 



But my intention is to confine myself to my own 

 locality, and it may not be altogether a work of 

 supererogation to describe what I have seen with my 

 own eyes in a district only mentioned in passing by 

 previous writers, so accessible from the centre of 

 London, and at dates so recent as 1918, 1919, and 

 1920. 



II 



The peculiarity of London wild bird-life is to be 

 almost entirely nomad and seasonal. With the excep- 

 tion of sparrow, titmouse, owl, crow and heron, I 

 do not know of a single species which remains in the 

 same place throughout the year. All is shifting and 

 unstable, and the same bird that stays to-day, to- 

 morrow will be going. Unless, therefore, one is dealing 

 exhaustively with the bird-life of all London as Mr. 

 Hudson did years ago, it will be convenient to take it 

 by rotation of the seasons and to begin with the autumn. 

 When the last of the summer migrants have departed, 

 the mighty wave of winged life still surges from north 

 to south, scattering in its passage a few flecks of 

 foam upon the mirk miles of London Town. The 

 country round my home is open, flat as a planed 

 board and treeless, except for the orchards, one on 

 either side of the river, a few scattered sycamores, 

 poplars, and elms, and lines of elms and willows along 

 the banks, a highway of migration. Most of the land, 

 with the fertility of the rich alluvial deposits of the 

 river to encourage it, is highly cultivated with vegetable 

 produce, and there is something harmonious and restful 

 to the eye in the long symmetrical rows of green 

 shoots channelling the dark earth. I can never fall 

 out with a long line, be it but that of the provincial 

 cabbage. For that reason, I grew to dislike the little 

 allotment patches the more I saw of them. Their 



