On the evening of August 26, 1897, I saw a number of wood-pigeons feeding on the haws in a manner quite new in my experience. There were twelve or fourteen birds on a good-sized thorn-tree growing in Buckingham Palace grounds; but the berries on this tree grew at the tips of long slender branches and could not have been reached by the birds in the ordinary way. The pigeons would settle on a branch and then begin moving cautiously towards the points, the branch bending beneath the weight more and more until the bird, unable to keep any longer on the branch, would suddenly turn over and remain hanging head down, suspended by its clinging feet. In this position, by stretching its neck it would be able to reach the berries, which it would then leisurely devour. As many as four or five birds were seen at one time hanging in this way, appearing with wings half-open like dead or wounded birds tied by their feet to the branchlets, from which they were suspended. Since witnessing this curious scene I have been told by Mr. Coppin, the superintendent at Battersea Park, that he has seen the wood-pigeons at that place acting in the same way. It is probably a habit of the birds which has hitherto escaped notice.
The dabchicks leave London in the autumn and return in spring: they may be looked for in the ornamental waters as early as the third week in March. The moorhens formerly disappeared from London in winter; they are now residents throughout the year in a few of the parks where there is shelter, and during severe frosts they feed at the same table with the ornamental water-fowl. From all the smaller lakes which they have recently colonised they vanish in cold weather. In autumn they wander about a good deal by night; any small piece of water will attract them, and their cries will be heard during the dark hours; before it is light they will be gone.
Crows and rooks are most often seen in London during the winter months. Many rooks have their winter roosting-place in Richmond Park, and small bands of these birds visit the central parks and other open spaces. On the morning of February 3, 1897, about fifty rooks visited Kensington Gardens and fed for some hours on the strip of grassed land adjoining the palace. The whole jackdaw colony, numbering twenty-four birds, fed with them, and when, about twelve o’clock, the visitors rose up and flew away, the daws, after seeing them off, returned in a body to the tree-tops near the palace, and for the rest of the day continued in an excited state. From time to time they would rush up with a loud clamour, then return to the tree-tops, where they would sit close together and silent as if expecting something, and at intervals of a minute or two a simultaneous cry would burst from them.
I have observed that on winter evenings these daws fly away from the gardens in a north-westerly direction: where their winter roosting-place is I have not discovered.
The starling is the most interesting London bird in his autumn movements. It is only at the end of July, when they are gathered in large bodies, that some idea can be formed of their numbers. Flocks of a dozen to forty or fifty birds may be seen in any park and green space any day throughout the winter; these are the birds that winter with us, and are but a small remnant of the entire number that breed in London. At the end of June the starlings begin to congregate every evening at their favourite roosting-places. Of these there are several, the most favoured being the islands in the ornamental water at Regent’s Park, the island in the Serpentine, and at Buckingham Palace grounds and Battersea Park. The last is the most important. Before sunset the birds are seen pouring in, flock after flock, from all quarters, until the trees on the island are black with their thousands, and the noise of their singing and chattering is so great that a person standing on the edge of the lake can hardly hear himself speak. These meeting places are evidently growing in favour, and if the autumn of 1898 shows as great an increase as those of 1896 and 1897 over previous years, London will have as compensation for its lost rookeries some very fine clouds of starlings. At the beginning of October most of the birds go away to spend the winter in the country, or possibly abroad. In February and March they begin to reappear in small flocks, and gradually scatter over the whole area of the metropolis, each pair going back to its old nesting-hole.
The annual scattering of robins at the end of summer, when, after the moult, the old birds attack and drive away the young, has been described in the last chapter. This habit of the bird alone would cause a good deal of moving about of the London robins each year, but it is also a very general belief of ornithologists that at this season there is a large migratory movement of young robins throughout the country. At all events, it is a fact that in August and September robins go about in London a good deal, and frequently appear in the most unlikely places. Some of these are no doubt birds of the year hatched in London or the suburbs, and others may be migrating robins passing through.
At the Tower of London robins occasionally appear in autumn, but soon go away. The last one that came settled down and was a great favourite with the people there for about two months, being very friendly, coming to window-sills for crumbs, and singing every day very beautifully. Then one day he was seen in the General’s garden wildly dashing about, hotly pursued by seven or eight sparrows, and as he was never seen again it was conjectured that the sparrows had succeeded in killing him. The robin is a high-spirited creature, braver than most birds, and a fair fighter, but against such a gang of feathered murderous ruffians, bent on his destruction, he would stand no chance.
The Tower sparrows, it may be added, appear to be about the worst specimens of their class in London. They are always at war with the pigeons and starlings, and would gladly drive them out if they could. It is a common thing for some foreign bird to escape from its cage on board ship and to take refuge in the trees and gardens of the Tower, but woe to the escaped captive and stranger in a strange land who seeks safety in such a place! Immediately on his arrival the sparrows are all up against him, not to ‘heave half a brick at him,’ since they are not made that way, but to hunt him from place to place until they have driven him, weak with fatigue and terror, into a corner where they can finish him with their bludgeon beaks.
This violence towards strangers of the Tower sparrow is not to be wondered at, since this unpleasant disposition or habit is common to many species. The prophet Jeremiah had observed it when he said, ‘Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird, the birds round about are against her.’ To the Tower sparrows every feathered stranger is conspicuously speckled, and they are against her. The wonder is that they should keep up their perpetual little teasing warfare against the pigeons and starlings, their neighbours from time immemorial. One would have imagined that so intelligent and practical a bird as the sparrow, after vainly trying for several centuries to drive out his fellow tenants, would have made peace with them and found some more profitable outlet for his superabundant energies. Possibly the introduction of a few feathered policemen—owls, or magpies, or sparrow hawks—would have the effect of making him a less quarrelsome neighbour.