WILD LIFE NEAR LONDON 183 



Vale can show quite a good head of pheasants, partridges, 

 hares, and rabbits, or that Richmond Park boasts a 

 heronry of some importance, and dehghtful it is to watch 

 the movements of the great birds as they fly to and fro 

 carrying small fish and other titbits with which to supply 

 the wants of their squawking and always hungry nest- 

 lings. The grand and ancient park of Richmond affords 

 sanctuary to many of the rarer and more interesting 

 species of our British birds, including the nightingale, 

 blackcap, redstart, red-backed shrike, yellow, grey, and 

 pied wagtails, nightjar, wheatear, stonechat, whinchat, 

 grasshopper-warbler, great and lesser whitethroats, great 

 tit, cole-tit, blue-tit, and longtail tit, golden-crested wTen 

 (amongst the fir trees), nuthatch, \^Tyneck, green and 

 greater spotted woodpeckers, and kingfisher. 



All these and many other kinds of birds too one has seen 

 in Richmond Park, including the only hoopoe we ever 

 met with in this country, which was observed running 

 under an old tree-trunk behind White Lodge — Queen 

 Mary's early home. 



With the exception of quite a colony of wood owls (the 

 brown or tawny species), which live amongst the giant 

 timber trees, neither Bushey Park nor the Home Park, 

 Hampton Court, has been found a satisfactory hunting- 

 ground from an ornithological point of view. In June 

 last, however, when walking through Bushey Park, the 

 writer noticed quite an exciting hunt between a large 

 stoat and a rabbit, which ended in a " kill " for the stoat, 

 in a strip of covert. Several jolly little squirrels were also 

 to be seen playing amongst the blossom-spangled branches 

 of the magnificent trees in the chestnut avenue. 



The gardens of Hampton Court Palace were then a 



