NATURE NOTES 
5 ^^ 
the London ornithologist, for in April the spring migrants 
pass through town. My sister saw a wheatear on the east 
side of the Serpentine on the 6th : the redstart was observed in 
Kensington Gardens on the i6th, the swallow on the 12th ; and 
the willow wren was singing there on the 20th. A reed warbler 
was singing by the Long Water on April 25th ; and several sand 
martins were flying over it on the 26th. 
On May 3, my sister saw a blackcap in Kensington 
Gardens : on the 6th the spotted flycatchers arrived ; and on 
the 14th I saw a swift flying over the Serpentine. About the 
middle of May a lesser whitethroat took up his abode close to 
the Serpentine bridge in a small but thick shrubbery, and he 
remained there, singing frequently, for several days, after which 
he suddenly disappeared. 
I believe that four pairs of spotted flycatchers nested in 
Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens last summer. One pair 
caused me considerable perplexity. I saw the old birds daily 
not very far from Hyde Park Corner, but could not find their 
nest. At last, on July 26, I discovered it in a most conspicuous 
position not more than eight feet from the ground in a tree under 
which thousands of people must have been walking every day. 
It contained four fully fledged young. The next day all the 
young had disappeared but one, and it was lying on the ground 
at the foot of the tree, dead but still warm. I did not again 
pass the tree in question until the 29th, when I noticed that the 
nest had disappeared. A few yards from the tree, however, 
was a boy with a barrow filled with weeds and rubbish, and in 
the barrow were the remains of the flycatchers’ nest which the 
boy said he had found lying at the foot of the tree from which 
I had just noticed that the nest was missing. On close examina- 
tion the nest proved to be made to a great extent of the remains 
of wax vestas, which lie in hundreds on the paths near Hyde 
Park Corner ; and it also contained the paper of two cigarette 
ends, and some long threads of coloured silk. I took the 
remains of the nest away with me. Whether the other young 
flycatchers survived I do not know ; but on August 6, I saw a 
party of five near the Speke Monument in Kensington Gardens, 
and three of them were from their plumage clearly young birds. 
On August 3, I noticed a willow wren by the Serpentine. 
On the 7th it rained hard until about five in the afternoon, when 
the sky cleared, and the evening became most beautiful. At 
half-past five I sauntered to the Round Pond, and found six or 
seven sand-martins and about a dozen swifts flying over the 
water. 
Friday, August 12, was a hot day, and the night seemed 
even hotter. It was one of those nights on which it is quite 
hopeless to think of ever going to sleep. At about one hour 
after midnight, as I lay awake, my ears suddenly caught the 
.sound of the call notes of a party of ringed plover passing over- 
head. I flew to the window and gazed upwards, but of course 
