BIRD-HAUNTED LONDON 101 



of the parent.* During the late summer of 1920 a 

 tawny owl used to perch on a sycamore tree near 

 my window every day at dusk, before setting out 

 darkling for the chase, and I once flushed one of 

 them from a cedar in private grounds at mid-day, 

 and he departed in full hooting trim. It is strange 

 that the wood-owl should be so much commoner in 

 London than the barn-owl, whom an imbecile perse- 

 cution has now made the rarer bird all over England. 

 On July 5, 1920, a yaffle actually flew over my garden 

 and back again five minutes later, the only occasion 

 I have seen this species in London outside Richmond 

 Park and Wimbledon Common. The wandering gipsy 

 parties of mistle-thrushes formed in the summer break 

 up in December, and early in November (1919) one of 

 them (they usually go straight over in parties of about 

 half a dozen) spent a few days in the orchard and on 

 the fields, greeting me with their boisterous, girding 

 cries of derision whenever I trespassed upon them. 

 When their adventurous, masculine spirits urged them 

 onwards, they left a pair behind for several weeks to 

 keep me company, and I once watched one of them 

 amusing himself about one of the orchard trees, 

 circling it, plunging to and fro among its branches, 

 skirmishing about over its top and diving down within 

 a few feet of the ground. The relationship of this 

 air-dog with the susceptible song-thrush is piquant. 

 They are as unlike as it is possible for one bird to be 

 from another, and only buoyancy their share in com- 

 mon, the one in facing perils, the other in recovering 

 from them. There is a poem in my friend Ralph 

 Hodgson's The Last Blackbird which gives the mistle- 

 thrush as no other can. 



I heard the grey thrush piping loud 



From the wheezing chestnut-tree ; 



The grey thrush gripped the spray that bowed 



Beneath the storm, and brave sang he — 



O, he sang brave as he were one 



Who hailed a people newly free, 



are two stanzas. 

 1 The parent also kee-wicks, but I made sure these were young. 



