106 LONDON BIRDS 



It was in 1883, when living in a house overlooking 

 the Birdcage Walk, that I first woke with the cooing of 

 a cushat in my ears. No note, at that time, was less 

 familiar amid the roar of London traffic; of all rural 

 sounds, none is more suggestive of the greenwood ; nor 

 could I believe my ears till, on looking out o' window, 

 I beheld a real woodpigeon cooing away on a poplar 

 branch to his mate below 



Now the Birdcage Walk was not arbitrarily named ; 

 it derives its title from King James's aviary, the park 

 and lake having been the home of tamed fowls ever 

 since. (Was not Saint-Evremond appointed governor 

 of Duck Island, the islet in the ornamental water, by 

 Charles IL, at a salary of 500 a year ? surely the most 

 artless sinecure ever devised.) Well it is to a couple 

 of pairs of Belgian woodpigeons, brought to St. James's 

 Park in 1880 or 1881, that we owe the foundation 

 of the present numerous colony in the metropolis. 

 Naturally among the wariest of wild birds, they have 

 lost all fear of man. I counted six-and-forty one March 

 morning among a lot of house-pigeons, busily picking 

 out the clover crowns from some newly-sown grass in 

 Hyde Park. What though their pink toes are dis- 

 gracefully defiled, their pearly plumage smirched with 

 smut, their voice has not altered, and one of the most 

 welcome sights in a London square is the cushat's 

 slovenly black nest with its pair of milk-white eggs. 



Talking of St. James's Park brings to mind a pathetic 

 story told by Sir T. D. Pigott about a bird in London, 

 though in no sense a London bird, a barnacle goose. 

 Now it is a curious trait in barnacle geese that, although 



