LONDON'S LITTLE BIBDS 105 



bird, song-thrush or throstle, and robin, and in 

 the present chapter these only will be dealt with. 

 All the other resident species found in London 

 proper, or inner London — missel-thrush, wren, 

 hedge-sparrow, nuthatch, tree-creeper, tits of 

 five species, chaffinch, bullfinch, greenfinch, and 

 yellowhammer, also the summer visitants, and 

 some rare residents occasionally to be found 

 breeding on the outskirts of the metropolis — will 

 be spoken of in subsequent chapters descriptive 

 of the parks and open spaces. 



Here once more the sparrow takes pre- 

 cedence. ' What ! the sparrow again ! ' the 

 reader may exclaim ; ' I thought we had quite 

 finished with that little bird, and were now 

 going on to something else.' Unfortunatelj^, as 

 we have seen, there is little else to go on to 

 until we get to the suburbs, and that little bird 

 the sparrow is not easily finished with. Besides, 

 common as he is, intimately known to every 

 man, woman, and child in the metropolis, even 

 to the meanest gutter child in the poorest 

 districts, it is always possible to find something 

 fresh to say of a bird of so versatile a mind, so 

 highly developed, so predominant. He must 

 indeed be gifted with remarkable qualities to 



