BIRD-HAUNTED LONDON 115 



are sometimes to be seen on the river tow-path, wind- 

 tossed balls with ambrosial voices. Strange to meet 

 such a bird in London. Possibly the linnet is the most 

 amiable of all living creatures, including man. The 

 jealous exclusiveness of the love season affects him 

 not, his volatile spirit is all neighbourliness. The 

 linnet is the moonstone in the crown of nature, yet 

 for all his fragility and gentleness, he lives and 

 thrives, while Dinotherium, Monstrum, horrendum, ingens 

 sleeps for ever in the vaults of the British Museum. 



I occasionally saw rooks (no doubt from the Rich- 

 mond rookery) in very small parties, but they rarely 

 traverse this district, and are only passengers when 

 they do. The sparrow-hawk, again, is much rarer than 

 the kestrel, but I have seen one three or four times 

 flying by. On one occasion it passed right over my 

 house, hotly pursued by a gallant party of pied 

 wagtails. Four of them dropped out, but the fifth 

 still maintained the chase, to return, tossed down the 

 wind, in a babble of triumph. What are the stories 

 of knight-errants overwhelming ogres, giants and 

 dragons to the dauntlessness of this Lancelot of the 

 Passerine Order, leaving his fellows to go hue and 

 cry after the invincible enemy of his little nation, since 

 no family cares steeled his fiery heart ? 



Fieldfares are very irregular visitors and only birds 

 of passage, though I very occasionally flushed a few 

 from the orchard in the winters both of 1918-19 

 and 1919-20. In March 1919 I once saw a pair of 

 redwings fly into the open fields from the orchard, 

 fly and disappear westward speedy as thought (they 

 are the fastest fliers, as they are the handsomest of 

 the British Turdince), and that was the first and last 

 I ever saw of them. Early in February 1919 I had 

 what I believe is a unique experience. I was watching 

 a large assembly of finches feeding from piled manure 

 heaps on the Middlesex side of the river, when I saw 

 to my glad surprise that among the sparrows, chaf- 

 finches and greenfinches there were thirty tree-sparrows 

 and bramblings, the males of the latter, with their 

 fawn breasts, mottled white rumps and upper plumage 



