NOTES ON LONDON BIRDS 
49 
small yellow ducklings, swimming and bobbing in a safe little 
pond below in the sunny hollow. 
As he turned to leave the orchard, where three short weeks 
ago God’s face and another face had smiled upon him, the 
farmer’s two little sons passed the lonely man, each carrying, 
in careful, dirty fingers, a string of eggs. 
“ Teddy, you’ve got jar too many thrush’s eggs on your 
string,” he heard one small boy say to the other, in a com- 
plaining voice. ” You needn’t have bothered about that last 
thrush’s nest.” 
“ So the thrush is also suffering,” thought the lonely man, 
with a fresh pain at his heart as he turned his face homewards. 
“Out of our small world Spring has kept faith, then, only with 
the speckled hen.” 
You see, he never understood about the ducklings. 
Rachel. 
NOTES ON LONDON BIRDS IN 1904 . 
I rowM 'HE following notes continue my record of observations 
in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, which have 
I for some years past appeared in Nature Notes. 
“ On the morning of New Year’s Day, one of the staff 
of the Royal Humane Society in Hyde Park informed me that 
a goose was sitting on a nest containing six or seven eggs on the 
island in the Serpentine. It was very cold, the thermometer at 
the Receiving House had been down at 23° F. during the night. 
The black swans now nest so regularly that it is scarcely 
worth while to continue recording the number of their broods. 
In July last I saw a pair with two young in St. James’s Park. 
On the Serpentine three broods were produced, in April, July 
and October. Nearly all the young birds appear to come to 
grief, dogs being perhaps the most frequent cause. When the 
cygnets are in down the old birds look after them with great 
care ; but as soon as the parents consider them old enough to 
look after themselves, they suddenly leave their young and start 
preparing a new nest, and it is then that the cygnets suffer. 
On January 25 there was a grey wagtail by the Serpentine ; 
this bird seems now' to be a more frequent visitor than formerly. 
I saw a second near the same spot on October 5, and another on 
November 12. Tw'O or three missel-thrushes were in splendid 
song in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens from early in 
February until the middle of April. By February 25 several 
of the black-headed gulls which frequent the Serpentine had 
acquired their dark Spring hoods. On March 4 I noticed a hen 
blackbird near the Bayswater Road with a nearly white head. 
As far as Spring migrants were concerned, 1904 was a 
terribly disappointing year. For the first time for many season- 
