i63 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



goes to his office in the morning and returns after the 

 lamps have been lighted does not see them, and 

 they are nothing in his life. Those who concern 

 themselves to chronicle such incidents might just 

 as well, for all that it matters to him, mistake their 

 species, like that bird-loving but unomithological 

 correspondent of the Times who wrote that he 

 had seen a flock of golden orioles in Kensington 

 Gardens : it turned out that what he had seen were 

 wheatears. Or they might draw a little on their 

 imaginations, and tell of sunward-sailing cranes 

 encamped on the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, 

 flamingoes in the Round Pond, great snowy owls in 

 Westminster Abbey, and an ibis — scarlet, glossy, 

 or sacred, according to fancy — ^perched on Peabody's 

 statue at the Royal Exchange. 



But his winter does not last for ever. When the 

 bitter months are past, with March that mocks us 

 with its crown of daffodils ; when the sun shines, 

 and the rain is soon over ; and elms and limes in 

 park and avenue, and unsightly smoke-blackened 

 brushwood in the squares, are dressed once more in 

 tenderest heart-refreshing green, even in London 

 we know that the birds have returned from beyond 

 the sea. Why should they come to us here, when it 

 would seem so much more to their advantage and 

 more natural for them to keep aloof from our dimmed 

 atmosphere, and the rude sounds of traffic, and the 



