Birds in London

by W. H. Hudson

The crow in London—Persecuted in the royal parks—Degradation of Hyde Park—Ducks in the Serpentine: how they are thinned—Shooting a chicken with a revolver—Habits of the Hyde Park mallard—Anecdotes—Number of London crows—The crow a long-lived bird; a bread-eater—Anecdote—Seeks its food on the river—The crow as a pet—Anecdotes.

The carrion crow has probably always been an inhabitant of the central parks; at all events it is well known that for a long time past a pair bred annually in the trees on the north side of the Serpentine, down to within the last three years. As these birds took toll of the ducks’ eggs and ducklings when they had a nest full of ravenous young to feed, it was resolved that they should no longer be tolerated; their nests were ordered to be pulled down and the old birds shot whenever an opportunity offered. Now it is not the Hyde Park crows alone that will suffer if this policy be adhered to, but the London crows generally will be in danger of extermination, for the birds are constantly passing and repassing across London, visiting all the parks where there are large trees, on their way to and from their various feeding-grounds. Hyde Park with Kensington Gardens is one of their favourite stopping places; one or more pairs may be seen there on most mornings, frequently at noon again on their return to Richmond, Kew, and Syon Park, and to the northern heights of London. On the morning of October 10, 1896, I saw eight carrion crows, in pairs, perched at a considerable distance apart on the elm-tops near the palace in Kensington Gardens. After calling for some time on the trees, they began to pursue and buffet one another with violence, making the whole place in the meantime resound with their powerful, harsh, grating cries. Their mock battle over, they rose to a considerable height in the air and went away towards Hammersmith. It seemed to me a marvellous thing that I had witnessed such a scene in such a place. But it is not necessary to see a number of carrion crows together to feel impressed with the appearance of the bird. There are few finer sights in the wild bird life of London than one of these visitors to the park on any autumn or winter morning, when he will allow you to come quite near to the leafless tree on which he is perched, to stand still and admire his massive raven-like beak and intense black plumage glossed with metallic green, as he sits flirting his wings and tail, swelling his throat to the size of a duck’s egg, as, at intervals, he pours out a succession of raucous caws—the cry of a true savage, and the crow’s ‘voice of care,’ as Chaucer called it.

CARRION CROW’S NEST

The crow is, in fact, the grandest wild bird left to us in the metropolis; and after corresponding and conversing with a large number of persons on the subject, I find that in London others—most persons, I believe—admire him as much as I do, and are just as anxious that he should be preserved. It may be mentioned here that in two or three of the County Council’s parks the superintendents protect and take pride in their crows. Why, then, should these few birds, which Londoners value, be destroyed in the royal parks for fear of the loss of a few ducklings out of the hundreds that are annually hatched and reared?

The ducks in the Serpentine are very numerous; many bucketfuls of food—meal and grain—are given to them every day when they congregate at the boat-house, and they get besides large quantities of broken bread cast to them by the public; all day long, and every day when it is not raining, there is a continual procession of men, women, and children bringing food for the birds. Is it permissible to ask for whose advantage this large number of ducks is reared and fattened for the table at so small a cost? Hyde Park is maintained by the nation, and presumably for the nation; it is a national as well as a royal park; is it not extraordinary that so noble a possession, the largest and most beautiful open space in the capital of the British empire, the chief city of the world, should be degraded to something like a poultry farm, or at all events a duck-breeding establishment, and that in order to get as much profit as possible out of the ducks, one of the chief ornaments of the park, the one representative of noble wild bird life that has survived until now in London, should be sacrificed?

Let us by all means have ducks, and many of them; they are gregarious by nature and look well in flocks, and are a source of innocent pleasure to numberless visitors to the parks, especially to children and nursemaids; but let us not have ducks only—a great multitude of ducks, to the exclusion of other wilder and nobler birds.

Personally, I am very fond of these ducks, although I have never had one on my table, and believe that I am as well able to appreciate their beauty and feel an interest in their habits as any of the gentlemen in authority who have decreed that the carrion crow shall go the way of the raven in Hyde Park. I love them because they are not the ducks that have been made lazy and fat, with all their fine faculties dulled, by long domestication. They are the wild duck, or mallard, introduced many years ago into the Serpentine. Doubtless they have some domestic taint in them, since the young birds reared each season exhibit a very considerable variation in colour and markings. Those that vary in colour are weeded out each winter, and the original type is in this way preserved; but not strictly preserved, as the weeding-out process is carelessly—I had almost said stupidly—performed.

The thinning takes place in December, and at that season people who live in the vicinity of the park are startled each morning by the sound of firing, as at the covert side. The sub-ranger and his friends and underlings are enjoying their big annual shoot. And there is no reason why they should not have this sport, if it pleases them, and if by this means the object sought could be obtained. But it is not obtained, as anyone may see for himself; and it also seems a trifle ridiculous that any man can find sport in shooting birds accustomed to walk about among people’s legs and feed out of little children’s hands.