Battersea Park has a good position to attract birds passing through or wandering about London, as these are apt to follow the river; and it also has the advantage of being near the central parks, which, as we have seen, serve as a kind of highway by which birds come into London from the west side. In the park itself the lake and wooded islands, and extensive shrubberies with dense masses of evergreen, tempt them to build. But it must also be said, in justice, that the superintendent of this park fully appreciates the value of the birds, and takes every pains to encourage and protect them. A few years ago, when he came to Battersea, there were about a dozen blackbirds; now as many as forty have been counted feeding in the early morning on one lawn; and in spring and summer, at about four o’clock every morning, there is such a concert of thrushes and blackbirds, with many other bright voices, as would be hard to match in any purely rural district. It is interesting to know that the wren, which is dying out in other London parks, has steadily increased at Battersea, and is now quite common. Robins and hedge-sparrows are also more numerous than in our other open spaces. A number of migrants are attracted to this spot every summer; of these the pied wagtail, lesser whitethroat, reed-warbler, and cuckoo bred last season. The larger birds are the wood-pigeon, moorhen, dabchick, and to these the carrion crow may now be added as a breeding species.
Clapham Common (220 acres) is the nearest to central London of that large, loose group of commons distinctive of the South-west district, its distance from Battersea being a little over a mile, and from Charing Cross about three miles and a half. Like Hackney Downs, it is a grassy space, but flatter, and having the appearance of a piece of ground not yet built upon it may be described as the least interesting open space in the metropolis. To the smoke and dust breathing, close-crowded inhabitants of Bethnal Green, which is not green nor of any other colour found in nature, this expanse of grass, if they had it within reach, would be an unspeakable boon, and seem to their weary eyes like a field in paradise. But Clapham is not over-crowded; it is a place of gardens full of fluttering leaves, and the exceeding monotony of its open space, set round with conspicuous houses, must cause those who live near it to sigh at the thought of its old vanished aspect when the small boy Thomas Babington Macaulay roamed over its broken surface, among its delightful poplar groves and furze and bramble bushes, or hid himself in its grass-grown gravel-pits, the world forgetting, by his nurse forgot. These grateful inequalities and roughnesses have been smoothed over, and the ancient vegetation swept away like dead autumn leaves from the velvet lawns and gravel walks of a trim suburban villa. When this change was effected I do not know: probably a good while back. To the Claphamites of the past the furze must have seemed an unregenerate bush, and the bramble something worse, since its recurved thorns would remind them of an exceedingly objectionable person’s finger-nails. As for the yellowhammer, that too gaily apparelled idle singer, who painted his eggs with so strange a paint, it must indeed have been a relief to get rid of him.
At present Clapham Common is no place for birds.
Wandsworth Common (183 acres) is a very long strip of ground, unfortunately very narrow, with long monotonous rows of red brick houses, hideous in their uniformity, at its sides. Here there is no attempt at disguise, no illusion of distance, no effect of openness left: the cheap speculative builder has been permitted to spoil it all. A railway line which cuts very nearly through the whole length of the common still further detracts from its value as a breathing-space. The broadest part of the ground at its western extremity has a good deal of furze growing on it, and here the common joins an extensive piece of ground, park-like in character, on which stands an extremely picturesque old red brick house. When this green space is built upon Wandsworth will lose the little that remains of its ancient beauty and freshness.
Among the small birds still to be found here is the yellowhammer, and it strikes one as very curious to hear his song in such a place. Why does he stay? Is he tempted by the little bit of bread and no cheese which satisfies his modest wants—the small fragments dropped by the numberless children that play among the bushes after school hours? The yellowhammer does not colonise with us; he goes and returns not, and this is now the last spot in the metropolis within four miles and a half of Charing Cross where he may still be found. He was cradled on the common, and does not know that there are places on the earth where the furze-bushes are unblackened by smoke, where at intervals of a few minutes the earth is not shaken by trains that rush thundering and shrieking, as if demented, into or out of Clapham Junction.
I fear the yellowhammer will not long remain in such a pandemonium. The people of Wandsworth are hardly deserving of such a bird.
Tooting Common is the general name for two commons—Tooting Bec and Tooting Graveney, 144 and 66 acres respectively. A public road divides them, but they form really one area. Tooting Bec has a fair amount of gorse and bramble bushes scattered about, and a good many old trees, mostly oak. The number of old trees gives this space something of a park-like appearance, but it is not exhilarating; on the contrary, its effect on the mind is rather depressing, on account of the perfect flatness of the ground and the sadly decayed and smoke-blackened condition of the trees. An ‘improvement’ of the late Metropolitan Board of Works was the planting of a very long and very straight avenue of fast-growing black poplars, and this belt of weed-like ungraceful trees, out of keeping with everything, has made Tooting Bec positively ugly.