104 
NATURE NOTES. 
there I saw him, day by day, for some time, seeming to enjoy 
the fun of the utterly futile attempts to catch him. This bird, 
I learnt, had escaped from a caged pair on the lower of the two 
islands in the lake, and though he visits his wife pretty often, I 
am told that the keepers have never, even yet, been able to 
tempt him to share her confinement. 
Thrushes of two kinds are numerous ; the blackbird often 
sings gloriously ; and linnets and other small birds abound. 
Now and then one sees and hears some fine parrot, seated 
on a pleasant tree-perch, escaped from domestic pettings, and 
here enjoying himself till he is encaged again. On the lower 
island they have a smallish dove — what it is I do not know — 
which, I am told, breeds there, but does not fly much about the 
park. The turtle-dove I do not think I have ever seen in the 
park. In this early season it has been interesting to watch the 
sparrows building in the leafless Lombardy poplars by the lake, 
their many nests soon to be hidden by the fast-springing foliage. 
About a month ago, a ring-dove began to build her slender 
nest in a hawthorn tree, and she has been now for more than a 
week sitting on her eggs. There she sits, not far from Marl- 
borough House and the Old Palace, close to the broad asphalted 
walk crossed by thousands during the day ; and there nobody, 
so far as I can see, seems to notice her, though she far over- 
sits the rag of a nest through the sticks of which one can almost 
see the eggs. One morning I saw a large number of people 
gathered just under the nest, but all were looking at a regiment 
of soldiers marching with band past Buckingham Palace across 
the edge of the park. In a few days the nest will, I hope, be 
shrouded by the leaves. Up to Saturday, April 7, the bird was 
sitting with her head towards the east wind and the Horse 
Guards ; but on the Monday, with the change of wind, the bird’s 
head had turned towards Buckingham Palace and the west. 
This is the bird usually known as the wood-pigeon, which 
figures in poetry as the cushat dove. Thus it is called, for 
instance, in the beautiful description of summer-dawn on Loch 
Katrine in the beginning of the third canto of the “ Lady of the 
Lake.” This is an extract from Scott’s description : — 
“ Invisible in flecked sky. 
The lark sent down her revelry ; 
The blackbird and the speckled thrush 
Good morrow gave from brake and bush ; 
In answer coo’d the cushat dove 
Her notes of peace and rest and love.” 
It is strange that, in this beautiful passage, Scott, a careful 
observer, has made the female bird the singer. The same thing 
is done, too, by the peasant-poet, Clare, who, having been in 
early life a plough-boy, should have known all about the bird- 
life of the fields. This, besides in other places, he does in that 
lovely Shakespearian sonnet on the thrush’s nest, of which these 
are a few lines : — 
