90 BIBDS IN LONDON 



curve to its tree again, and listening to the 

 beautiful sound of its humanlike plaint, which 

 may be heard not only in summer but on any 

 mild day in winter, one is apt to lose sight of the 

 increasingly artificial aspect of things ; to forget 

 the havoc that has been wrought, until the 

 surviving trees — the decayed giants about whose 

 roots the cruel, hungry, glittering axe ever flits 

 and plays like a hawk-moth in the summer 

 twilight — no longer seem conscious of their 

 doom. 



Twenty years ago the wood- pigeon was 

 almost unknown in London, the very few birds 

 that existed being confined to woods on the 

 borders of the metropolis and to some of the 

 old private parks — Eavenscourt, Brondesbury, 

 Clissold and Brockwell Parks ; except two or 

 three pairs that bred in the group of fir trees on 

 the north side of Kensington Gardens, and one 

 pair in St. James's Park. Tree-felling caused 

 these birds to abandon the parks sometime 

 during the seventies. But from 1883, when a 

 single pair nested in Buckingham Palace Gar- 

 dens, wood-pigeons have increased and spread 

 from year to year until the present time, when 

 there is not any park with large old trees, or 



