THROUGH THE YEAR 127 



for all, and that they fly to the country to feed, 

 returning to London and safety to roost." He 

 added that for some years he fed these birds through- 

 out the year, and, as a rule, would have forty or 

 fifty a day coming down. They even alit on the 

 window-sills. I doubt not he is right in thinking 

 the starlings are chiefly London-bred birds, and 

 that they come in at night for safe roosting places. 

 Curious that starlings should come to sleep in 

 London near the heart of London for quiet and 

 seclusion ! 



THE WREN 



The real wood wren is not that shapely, delicate 

 leaf warbler to which we often give the name : it 

 is the brown wren, the winsome little bird which 

 by the village folk is so well called though why one 

 might find it hard to say cutty or juggy wren. 

 The wren thrives almost anywhere in England. It 

 is a frequenter of neighbourhoods, a frequenter of 

 solitudes : reminding me in this very much of the 

 redbreasts of autumn and winter which haunt our 

 gardens, and these seem naturally garden birds ; 

 and haunt the most lonely lanes among the wild 

 hills and windy beech woods on the remote sides and 

 summits of downs, and these seem naturally birds 

 of lonely remote spots. 



Wrens live year in and year out about cottage 

 gardens, castle gardens, the trimmed hedges of the 

 most beaten highways, the old untrimmed hedges of 

 deep-rutted farm by-roads along which scarcely a 



