Birds in London

by W. H. Hudson

If (I thought) this innumerous feathered company could only be varied somewhat, the modest plumage retouched, by Nature, with harmonious olive green and yellow tints, pure greys and pure browns, with rose, carmine, tile and chestnut reds; and if the monotonous little burly forms could be reshaped, and made in some cases larger, in others smaller, some burlier still and others slimmer, more delicate and aërial in appearance, the spectacle of their afternoon tea would be infinitely more attractive and refreshing than it now is to many a Londoner’s tired eyes.

Their voices, too—for the refashioned mixed crowd would have a various language, like the species that warble and twitter and call musically to one another in orchard and copse—would give a new and strange delight to the listener.

No doubt the sparrow is, to quote the letter-writer’s expression, ‘a jolly little fellow,’ quite friendly with his supposed enemy man, amusing in his tea-table manners, and deserving of all the praise and crumbs we give him. He is even more. To those who have watched him begging for and deftly catching small scraps of bread, suspended like a hawk-moth in the air before the giving hand, displaying his conspicuous black gorget and the pale ash colour of his under surface, while his rapidly vibrating wings are made silky and translucent by the sunlight passing through them, he appears, indeed, a pretty and even graceful creature.

PARK SPARROW
BEGGING

But he is, after all, only a common sparrow, a mean representative of bird life in our midst; in all the æsthetic qualities which make birds charming—beauty of form and colour, grace of motion, and melody—less than the least of the others. Therefore to greatly praise him is to publish our ignorance, or, at all events, to make it appear that he is admired because, being numerous and familiar with man, he has been closely and well looked at, while the wilder and less common species have only been seen at a distance, and therefore indistinctly.

A distinguished American writer on birds once visited England in order to make the acquaintance of our most noted feathered people, and in his haste pronounced the chaffinch the ‘prettiest British songster.’ Doubtless he had seen it oftenest, and closely, and at its best; but he would never have expressed such an opinion if he had properly seen many other British singing birds; if, for instance (confining ourselves to the fringilline family), he had seen his ‘shilfa’s’ nearest relation, the brambling, in his black dress beautifully variegated with buff and brown; or the many-coloured cirl-bunting; or that golden image of a bird, the yellowhammer; or the green siskin, ‘that lovely little oddity,’ seeking his food, tit-like, among the pine needles, or clinging to pendulous twigs; or the linnet in his spring plumage—pale grey and richest brown and carmine—singing among the flowery gorse; or the goldfinch, flitting amidst the apple-bloom in May, or feeding on the thistle in July and August, clinging to the downy heads, twittering as he passes from plant to plant, showing his gay livery of crimson, black, and gold; or the sedentary bullfinch, a miniature hawk in appearance, with a wonderful rose-coloured breast, sitting among the clustering leaves of a dark evergreen—yew or holly.

Beautiful birds are all these, and there are others just as beautiful in other passerine families, but alas! they are at a distance from us; they live in the country, and it is only that small ‘whiff of the country’ to be enjoyed in a public park which fate allows to the majority of Londoners, the many thousands of toilers from year’s end to year’s end, and their wives and children.

To those of us who take an annual holiday, and, in addition, an occasional run in the country, or who are not bound to town, it is hardly possible to imagine how much is meant by that little daily or weekly visit to a park. Its value to the confined millions has accordingly never been, and probably cannot be, rightly estimated. For the poor who have not those periods of refreshment which others consider so necessary to their health and contentment, the change from the close, adulterated atmosphere of the workshop and the living-room, and stone-paved noisy street, to the open, green, comparatively quiet park, is indeed great, and its benefit to body and mind incalculable. The sight of the sun; of the sky, no longer a narrow strip, but wide, infinite over all; the freshness of the unconfined air which the lungs drink in; the green expanse of earth, and large trees standing apart, away from houses—all this produces a shock of strange pleasure and quickens the tired pulse with sudden access of life. In a small way—sad it is to think in how small a way!—it is a return to nature, an escape for the moment from the prison and sick-room of unnatural conditions; and the larger and less artificial the park or open space, and the more abounding in wild, especially bird, life, the more restorative is the effect.

It is indeed invariably the animal life which exercises the greatest attraction and is most exhilarating. It is really pathetic to see how many persons of the working class come every day, all the year round, but especially in the summer months, to that minute transcript of wild nature in Hyde Park at the spot called the Dell, where the Serpentine ends. They are drawn thither by the birds—the multitude of sparrows that gather to be fed, and the wood-pigeons, and a few moorhens that live in the rushes.