4 o6 INFLUENCES OF CULTIVATION 



advance of civilization, are graining a new confidence. Black- 

 headed Gulls troop up the Thames to London each autumn 

 in ever-increasing numbers, a habit said to date from the 

 great frost of 1895. Of recent years, too, large numbers of 

 Wood Pigeons have settled in London, nesting even in 

 Trafalgar Square and feeding with the utmost composure 

 amongst the human frequenters of the public parks, just as 

 they pick grain from the very doors of warehouses in our 

 busiest seaports. Nor is this familiarity confined to birds 

 which may be regarded as common. So rare a bird as the 

 Great Crested Grebe has nested for several years in the Penn 

 Ponds of Richmond Park on the outskirts of London. In 

 the streets of Edinburgh the hoot of the Brown Owl may be 

 heard on many an evening when the din of the traffic and 

 tramway cables has -ceased; and flights of Pied Wagtails, 

 containing scores or even hundreds of individuals, roost 

 on spring and autumn evenings in the eaves of the British 

 Linen Company's Bank in St Andrew's Square and on the 

 ornamental stonework of the roof of the General Post Office, 

 a coign of vantage which they have occupied for at least 

 thirty-five years, and at which they arrive towards dusk with 

 a rush of wings to be heard fifty yards away. Many of the 

 birds of the town garden, the Blackbirds, and Thrushes, the 

 Tits and Starlings, feed unconcernedly almost within arm's 

 length of an observer, and Rooks have become well-nigh as 

 impudent as Jackdaws. 



One cannot but mention in this relation, though it has no 

 special connection with the influence of towns, the confidence 

 which the Robin develops in association with man. Most 

 country bairns and many town children are familiar from 

 experience with the Robin which sits upon the spade-handle, 

 while the gardener (as is his custom) rests ; and Robins have 

 been known to accompany shooting parties in order to pick 

 Fleas from the Rabbits killed, confidence in man overcoming, 

 in this case, dread of the gun and its noise. This confidence 

 is not an attribute of special individuals, for I know a 

 cottage near West Linton, which, in the snowy spring of 

 1917, was invaded in less than a week by as many as seven 

 different Redbreasts in search of food, all the birds being 

 kept together in a cage till the storm was over. 



