44 
HAMLYN'S MENAGERIE MAGAZINE. 
far as I have seen, but everywhere hen Blackbirds, 
although larger than their mates and inclined 
to bully them, seem much rarer and shyer than 
males; when disturbed, the cock, I notice, flies 
off, but the hen hops to cover if she can, and is 
seldom seen so far away from it as her mate. 
Blackbirds seem to hold their own remarkably well 
in London; Song-thrushes, I think, are not so 
common as they were. 
Moorhens thrive apace, but I have seen two 
cases of degeneracy among them — birds with 
quill-feathers broken off short, like the Sparrows' 
tails above mentioned. As the Moorhen becomes 
flightless during the moult every year, it can get 
along for a time without the power of flight in any 
case, but a rotten-quilled bird would be very much 
"out of it" if its quills broken before hard weather 
in winter, when water might be frozen and ex- 
pose it to dogs and cats. One, if not both, of 
these broken-quilled biHs, I noticed, was mated 
up, so there is every chance of such degeneracy 
being handed on. I have also seen a tail-less 
Sparrow mated; evidently birds care nothing for 
what are to us unsightly deformities. Moorhens 
raised two broods last year in the basins at the 
end of the Serpentine, where the only landing- 
places were the stone platform about a yard square 
in the middle, and some tufts of rushes, etc., in 
pots, with roots below water-level. 
Mallard also raised two or three broods in 
these basins, and I saw the young diving like 
young Pochards; this young down} - Mullard will 
often do, but in spite of this activity under water 
both Mallard and Moorhens no doubt depended 
largely for their food on what was thrown in. 
It was interesting to see these surface fowl, 
which are naturally given to spending much time 
and getting much food, on land, living and thriv- 
ing in circumstances one would have though only 
suitable for diving birds like the Tufted Duck, 
which, by the way, is still very common in London 
though but very few indeed are bred in compari- 
son with those that come in in the autumn. St. 
James's Park used to be the only place I know 
where any numbers were bred. I once saw in 
pre-war days a female with 15 young. 
Mullard have been thinned off considerably 
in accordance with the food restrictions; I saw 
over a dozen decoyed into a small enclosure on 
one occasion and taken off in a basket by the 
keeper. No doubt they "did their bit" in the hos- 
pitals, and only one raised any objection, con- 
scientious or otherwise, by quacking. This struck 
me as worthy of note, as the Mallard's descendant, 
the tame duck, start to " hollow before he's hurt," 
quacking even when merely cornered; so evidently 
our cockney Mallard have not lost spirit, though 
they show some tendency to "sport" in colour, 
even where, as in the Royal parks now-a-davs, off- 
coloured birds are not encouraged. 
I may say, in conclusion, that I think the re- 
striction on feeding animals with bread, is a mis- 
take as far as it applies to those used for human 
food, at any rate. Food given to poultry or rab- 
bits, or to the London ducks and pigeons, is not 
wasted, as the creatures themselves can be used; 
and if people are going to waste bread they will 
do it, if they have to burn it or throw it in some 
out-of-the-way corner; all of us must have seen 
food thus wasted even since the restriction. What 
I do call wasteful is the practice of pinioning the 
Thames swans, so that these big birds, unable to 
fly away and look after themselves when hard 
weather comes, have to be shut up and fed at 
such times; it would have been better to sell them 
(and all other pinioned fowl) off when feeding was 
to be restricted, and let the full-winged fowl look 
after themselves. 
SWAN-UPPING ON THE YARE. 
Monday morning saw the beginning of the 
time-honoured ceremony of swan-upping, or 
gathering up of the young swans, on the waters 
of the Yare. The privilege of keeping swans 
dates back to the time of the old monasteries, 
whose occupants dined off the Royal bird more 
often than does the average man of to-day. On 
the Yare and the adjacent waters within the Nor- 
wich jurisdiction there are about twenty owners, 
each holding their memorial rights from the Crown 
and each with his special mark by which the birds 
are distinguished, and which is cut or branded on 
the bill of the bird. Hanging up in the Memorial 
Hall at the Great Hospital, Bishopsgate Street, 
Norwich, is an interesting chart of these swan- 
marks compiled from ancient MSS. These marks 
vary from the Royal stamp of four dots to the oft- 
misquoted one of two nicks. Among the owners 
are the Mayor and Corporation, the Great Hos- 
pital, the Bishop, the Dean, Lord Rosebery, the 
late Sir Reginald Beauchamp, Mr. Colman, Col- 
onel Gilbert, Mr. Holmes, and others. 
Swans are long lived, and some of the old 
birds have become accustomed to these "uppings," 
and the separations that follow. One pair of 
swans belonging to the Norwich Corporation have 
in the course of 25 years laid 239 eggs, and brought 
up 175 young. Although the old birds manifest the 
greatest objection to the removal of their young, 
yet before they are very old they take great pains 
to make home life so uncomfortable for them that 
they are glad to leave. Many stories are told of 
the pugnacious habits of these birds. One old bird 
after asserting his "rights" for sixty years became 
at length so aggresive that passers-by complained 
of him as dangerous. Accordingly it was decided 
to banish him, and he was carried, shut up in a 
