In autumn and in spring a variety of summer visitants, mostly warblers, pass through London, delaying a little in its green spaces. In September we are hardly cognisant of these small strangers within our gates, all but one or two being silent at that season. In April and May, in many of the parks, we may hear the chiffchaff, willow-wren, blackcap, sedge-warbler, the whitethroat, occasionally the cuckoo, and a few other rarer species, but they sing little, and soon leave us to seek better breeding-sites than the inner parks offer.
While some of our birds, as we have seen, forsake us at the approach of cold weather, some for a short period, others to remain away until the following spring, a small contrary movement of birds into London is going on. These winterers with us come not in battalions and are little remarked. They are to be found, a few here and a few there, all over London, wherever there are trees and bushes, but less in the public parks than in private grounds, cemeteries, and other quiet spots. Thus, during the last two exceptionally mild winters a few skylarks have lived contentedly in the comparatively small green area at Lambeth Palace. Nunhead Cemetery is a favourite winter resort of a number of small birds—starlings, chaffinches, and greenfinches, and a few of other species. Chaffinches are found in winter in several of the open spaces where they do not breed, and among other species to be found wintering in the quiet green spots in small numbers are linnets, goldfinches, pipits, and the pied wagtail.
In exceptionally severe winters birds come into London in considerable numbers—rooks, starlings, larks, blackbirds and thrushes, finches, and other small species—and they then visit not only the parks but all the squares and private gardens. During the big frost of 1890-1 skylarks were seen every day searching for food on the Thames Embankment. These strangers all vanish from London on the break-up of the frost.
During the late autumn and winter months a few large birds occasionally appear—heron, mallard, widgeon, teal, &c. As a rule they come and go during the dark hours. The sight of water and the cries of the ornamental water-fowl attract them. They are mostly irregular visitors, and cannot very well be included in the list of London birds.
The case of the black-headed gull is different, as this species may now be classed with the regular visitors, and not merely to the outlying spaces, like the fieldfare, but to the central parks of the metropolis, where, like the wood-pigeon, he looks to man for food.
The black-headed gull has always been a winter visitor in small numbers to the lower reaches of the Thames, coming up the river as far as London Bridge. In severe winters more birds come; thus, in the winter of 1887-8 they appeared in great numbers, and ranged as high up as Putney. The late Mr. Tristram-Valentine, in describing this visitation, wrote: ‘It is seldom, indeed, that these birds appeared in such numbers in the Thames above London Bridge as they have done lately, and their appearance has, from its rarity, caused a corresponding excitement among Londoners, as is proved by the numbers of people that have crowded the bridges and embankments to watch their movements. To a considerable portion of these, no doubt, the marvellous flight and power of wing of the gull came as an absolute revelation.’
Gulls came up the river in still greater force during the exceptionally long and severe frost of 1892-3. That was a memorable season in the history of the London gulls. Then, for the last time, gulls were shot on the river between the bridges, and this pastime put a stop to by the police magistrates, who fined the sportsmen for the offence of discharging firearms to the public danger. And then for the first time, so far as I know, the custom of regularly feeding the gulls in London had its beginning. Every day for a period of three to four weeks hundreds of working men and boys would take advantage of the free hour at dinner time to visit the bridges and embankments, and give the scraps left from their meal to the birds. The sight of this midday crowd hurrying down to the waterside with welcome in their faces and food in their hands must have come ‘as an absolute revelation’ to the gulls.
During the memorable frost of 1894-5 the birds again appeared in immense numbers, and would doubtless have soon left us, or else perished of cold and hunger on the snow-covered hummocks of ice which filled the Thames and gave it so arctic an aspect, but for the quantities of food cast to them every day. As in previous years when gulls have visited the Thames in considerable numbers, many of the birds found their way into the parks, and were especially numerous in St. James’s Park, where they formed the habit of feeding with the ornamental water-fowl.
We have since experienced three exceptionally mild winters, so that the gulls were not driven by want to invade us; but they have come to us nevertheless, not having forgotten the generous hospitality London extended to them in the frost. St. James’s Park has now become the favourite wintering place of a considerable number of birds, and their habit is to spend the day on the lake, feeding on the broken bread and scraps of meat thrown to them from the bridge, and leaving about sunset to spend the night on the river. In the autumn of 1896, three or four days after the gulls began to appear on the Thames, a body of two or three hundred of these birds settled down in the park water, and fed there every day and all day long until the following spring—March 1897.