NATURE NEAR LONDON 



second correspondence appeared in the spring upon 

 the same subject, and again the scarcity of small 

 birds was deplored. 



So far as the neighbourhood of London was con- 

 cerned, this was the exact reverse of the truth. 



Small birds swarmed, as I have already stated, in 

 every ploughed field. All the birdcatchers in Lon- 

 don with traps and nets and limed twigs could 

 never make the slightest appreciable difference to 

 such flocks. I have always expressed my detesta- 

 tion of the birdcatcher ; but it is founded on other 

 grounds, and not from any fear of the diminution 

 of numbers only. \Vhere the birdcatcher does in- 

 flict irretrievable injury is in this way a bird, 

 say a nightingale, say a goldfinch, has had a nest 

 for years in the corner of a garden, or an apple- 

 tree in an orchard. The birdcatcher presently 

 decoys one or other of these, and thenceforward 

 the spot is deserted. The song is heard no more ; 

 the nest never again rebuilt. 



The first spring I resided in Surrey I was fairly 

 astonished and delighted at the bird life which pro- 

 claimed itself everywhere. The bevies of chiff- 

 chafFs and willow-wrens which came to the thickets 

 in the furze, the chorus of thrushes and blackbirds, 

 the chaffinches in the elms, the greenfinches in 

 the hedges, wood-pigeons and turtledoves m the 

 copses, tree pipits about the oaks in the cornfields ; 

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