THE FERJ3 NATURE OF THE LONDON PARKS. 
m 
Amongst the old trees in Kensington Gardens both the greater 
and lesser spotted woodpeckers maybe occasionally seen; the 
latter being the commoner bird of the two, although the former 
has been known to breed there. Both species have been noticed 
also in the Regent’s Park. 
To give any detailed account of the numerous small birds 
which have been observed to frequent the London parks and 
gardens at different seasons would carry us far beyond the limits 
of the present article.* It must suffice if we refer briefly to 
some only of the more noteworthy. 
Amongst these the nightingale should, perhaps, stand first. 
Several naturalists have detected its presence in summer in the 
Regent’s Park ; and of late years a favourite resort of this bird 
has been the Flower Walk, in Kensington Gardens, whence its 
unmistakable notes have been poured forth in April and May 
to numbers of delighted listeners. Skylarks sometimes visit 
Hyde Park, where we have occasionally both seen and heard them. 
Few would expect to find in the great metropolis so sylvan a 
species as the cuckoo, and yet this bird not only passes through 
town on its way to and from its summer quarters, but occa- 
sionally stays long enough to commit an egg to the care of 
some dupe of a foster-parent. In August 1870 we observed a 
cuckoo in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; and in August 1876, while 
passing from Bedford Row to Gray’s Inn Square, we saw a 
cuckoo fly across Gray’s Inn Gardens and pass over Holborn in 
a southerly direction. It was flying so low that it only just 
cleared the tops of the houses. An observant friend, who pays 
frequent visits in the early morning to the Botanical Gardens, 
Regent’s Park, discovered that the reed warbler breeds there 
every summer ; and in the nest of one of these birds, in 1872, he 
found the egg of a cuckoo. The following summer he was much 
interested in observing a young cuckoo sitting in the centre of 
a growth of large heracleums and being fed with caterpillars by 
a reed warbler. At the lake in the same gardens the kingfisher 
is sometimes seen, generally in autumn, and occasionally makes 
a protracted stay. In August 1863 a kingfisher was seen fre- 
quently at the Ornamental Water in the Regent’s Park. 
Amongst the few observations of Gilbert White which relate 
to birds in London is one which has reference to the house- 
martin. He says : 6 1 have not only seen them nesting in the 
* In the “ Proceedings of the Zoological Society ” for 1863 (p. 159) will 
he found a list, by Mr. Bartlett, of no less than fifty-seven species of birds 
observed by him in the Regent’s Park ; and Mr. F. D. Power, in the 
“ Zoologist ” for 1865 (p. 9727), has furnished another list of twenty-four 
species which he noted as having occurred in a single square in London — 
Queen’s Square, Bloomsbury. A resident of Gray’s Inn in the course of 
ten years found that twenty different kinds of birds had been seen there by 
him. See “ The Field,” March 11, 1876. 
