CHAPTER VI

RECENT COLONISTS

The wood-pigeon in Kensington Gardens--Its increase--Its beauty and charm--Perching on Shakespeare's statue in Leicester Square--Change of habits--The moorhen--Its appearance and habits--An æsthetic bird--Its increase--The dabchick in London--Its increase--Appearance and habits--At Clissold Park--The stock-dove in London.

Of the species which have established colonies in London during recent years, the wood-pigeon, or ringdove, is the most important, being the largest in size and the most numerous; and it is also remarkable on account of its beauty, melody, and tameness. Indeed, the presence of this bird and its abundance is a compensation for some of our losses suffered in recent years. It has for many of us, albeit in a less degree than the carrion crow, somewhat of glamour, producing in such a place as Kensington Gardens an illusion of wild nature; and watching it suddenly spring aloft, with loud flap of wings, to soar circling on high and descend in a graceful curve to its tree again, and listening to the beautiful sound of its human-like plaint, which may be heard not only in summer but on any mild day in winter, one is apt to lose sight of the increasingly artificial aspect of things; to forget the havoc that has been wrought, until the surviving trees--the decayed giants about whose roots the cruel, hungry, glittering axe ever flits and plays like a hawk-moth in the summer twilight--no longer seem conscious of their doom.

Twenty years ago the wood-pigeon was almost unknown in London, the very few birds that existed being confined to woods on the borders of the metropolis and to some of the old private parks--Ravenscourt, Brondesbury, Clissold and Brockwell Parks; except two or three pairs that bred in the group of fir trees on the north side of Kensington Gardens, and one pair in St. James's Park. Tree-felling caused these birds to abandon the parks sometime during the seventies. But from 1883, when a single pair nested in Buckingham Palace Gardens, wood-pigeons have increased and spread from year to year until the present time, when there is not any park with large old trees, or with trees of a moderate size, where these birds are not annual breeders. As the park trees no longer afford them sufficient accommodation they have gone to other smaller areas, and to many squares and gardens, private and public. Thus, in Soho Square no fewer than six pairs had nests last summer. It was very pleasant, a friend told me, to look out of his window on an April morning and see two milk-white eggs, bright as gems in the sunlight, lying in the frail nest in a plane tree not many yards away. In North London these birds have increased greatly during the last three years. Sixteen pairs bred successfully in 1897 in Clissold Park, which is small, and there were scores of nests in the neighbourhood, on trees growing in private grounds.

Even in the heart of the smoky, roaring City they build their nests and rear their young on any large tree. To other spaces, where there are no suitable trees, they are daily visitors; and lately I have been amused to see them come in small flocks to the coal deposits of the Great Western Railway at Westbourne Park. What attraction this busy black place, vexed with rumbling, puffing, and shrieking noises, can have for them I cannot guess. These doves, when disturbed, invariably fly to a terrace of houses close by and perch on the chimney-pots, a newly acquired habit. In Leicester Square I have seen as many as a dozen to twenty birds at a time, leisurely moving about on the asphalted walks in search of crumbs of bread. It is not unusual to see one bird perched in a pretty attitude on the head of Shakespeare's statue in the middle of the square, the most commanding position. I never admired that marble until I saw it thus occupied by the pretty dove-coloured guest, with white collar, iridescent neck, and orange bill; since then I have thought highly of it, and am grateful to Baron Albert Grant for his gift to London, and recall with pleasure that on the occasion of its unveiling I heard its praise, as a work of art, recited in rhyme by Browning's--

Hop-o-my-thumb, there, Banjo-Byron on his strum-strum, there.

I heartily wish that the birds would make use in the same way of many other statues with which our public places are furnished, if not adorned.

So numerous are the wood-pigeons at the end of summer in their favourite parks that it is easy for any person, by throwing a few handfuls of grain, to attract as many as twenty or thirty of them to his feet. Their tameness is wonderful, and they are delightful to look at, although so stout of figure. Considering their enormous appetites, their portliness seems only natural. But a full habit does not detract from their beauty; they remind us of some of our dearest lady friends, who in spite of their two score or more summers, and largeness where the maiden is slim, have somehow retained loveliness and grace. We have seen that the London wood-pigeon, like the London crow, occasionally alights on buildings. One bird comes to a ledge of a house-front opposite my window, and walks up and down there. We may expect that other changes in the birds' habits will come about in time, if the present rate of increase should continue. Thus, last summer, one pair built a nest on St. Martin's Church, Trafalgar Square; another pair on a mansion in Victoria Street, Westminster.

Something further will be said of this species in a chapter on the movements of birds in London.

Next to the ringdove in importance--and a bird of a more fascinating personality, if such a word be admissible--is the moorhen, pretty and quaint in its silky olive-brown and slaty-grey dress, with oblique white bar on its side, and white undertail, yellow and scarlet beak and frontal shield, and large green legs. _Green-legged little hen_ is its scientific name. Its motions, too, are pretty and quaint. Not without a smile can we see it going about on the smooth turf with an air of dignity incongruous in so small a bird, lifting up and setting down its feet with all the deliberation of a crane or bustard. A hundred curious facts have been recorded of this familiar species--the 'moat-hen' of old troubled days when the fighting man, instead of the schoolmaster as now, was abroad in England, and manor-houses were surrounded by moats, in which the moorhen lived, close to human beings, in a semi-domestic state. But after all that has been written, we no sooner have him near us, under our eyes, as in London to-day, than we note some new trait or pretty trick. Thus, in a pond in West London I saw a moorhen act in a manner which, so far as I know, had never been described; and I must confess that if some friend had related such a thing to me I should have been disposed to think that his sight had deceived him. This moorhen was quietly feeding on the margin, but became greatly excited on the appearance, a little distance away, of a second bird. Lowering its head, it made a little rush at, or towards, the new-comer, then stopped and went quietly back; then made a second little charge, and again walked back. Finally it began to walk _backwards_, with slow, measured steps, towards the other bird, displaying, as it advanced, or retrograded, its open white tail, at the same time glancing over its shoulder as if to observe the effect on its neighbour of this new mode of motion. Whether this demonstration meant anger, or love, or mere fun, I cannot say.

Instances of what Ruskin has called the moorhen's 'human domesticity of temper, with curious fineness of sagacity and sympathies in taste,' have been given by Bishop Stanley in his book on birds. He relates that the young, when able to fly, sometimes assist in rearing the later broods, and even help the old birds to make new nests. Of the bird's æsthetic taste he has the following anecdote. A pair of very tame moorhens that lived in the grounds of a clergyman, in Cheadle, Staffordshire, in constantly adding to the materials of their nest and decorating it, made real havoc in the garden; the hen was once seen sitting on her eggs 'surrounded with a brilliant wreath of scarlet anemones.' An instance equally remarkable occurred in 1896 in Battersea Park. A pair of moorhens took it into their fantastic little heads to build their nest against a piece of wire-netting stretched across the lake at one point. It was an enormous structure, built up from the water to the top of the netting, nearly three feet high, and presented a strange appearance from the shore. On a close view the superintendent found that four tail-feathers of the peacock had been woven into its fabric, and so arranged that the four broad tips stood free above the nest, shading the cavity and sitting bird, like four great gorgeously coloured leaves.

The moorhen, like the ringdove, was almost unknown in London twenty years ago, and is now as widely diffused, but owing to its structure and habits it cannot keep pace with the other bird's increase. It must have water, and some rushes, or weeds, or bushes to make its nest in; and wherever these are found, however small the pond may be, there the moorhen will live very contentedly.

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A very few years ago it would have been a wild thing to say that the little grebe was a suitable bird for London, and if some wise ornithologist had prophesied its advent how we should all have laughed at him! For how should this timid feeble-winged wanderer be able to come and go, finding its way to and from its chosen park, in this large province covered with houses, by night, through the network of treacherous telegraph wires, in a lurid atmosphere, frightened by strange noises and confused by the glare of innumerable lamps? Of birds that get their living from the water, it would have seemed safer to look for the coming (as colonists) of the common sandpiper, kingfisher, coot, widgeon, teal: all these, also the heron and cormorant, are occasional visitors to inner London, and it is to be hoped that some of them will in time become permanent additions to the wild bird life of the metropolis.

The little grebe, before it formed a settlement, was also an occasional visitor during its spring and autumn travels; and in 1870, when there was a visitation on a large scale, as many as one hundred little grebes were seen at one time on the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. But it was not until long afterwards, about fifteen years ago, that the first pair had the boldness to stay and breed in one of the park lakes, in sight of many people coming and going every day and all day long. This was at St. James's Park, and from this centre the bird has extended his range from year to year to other parks and spaces, and is now as well established as the ringdove and moorhen. But, unlike the others, he is a summer visitor, coming in March and April, and going, no man knows whither, in October and November. If he were to remain, a long severe frost might prove fatal to the whole colony. He lives on little fishes and water insects, and must have open water to fish in.

He is not a showy bird, nor large, being less than the teal in size, and indeed is known to comparatively few persons. Nevertheless he is a welcome addition to our wild bird life, and is, to those who know him, a wonderfully interesting little creature, clothed in a dense unwettable plumage, olive, black, and chestnut in colour, his legs set far back--'becoming almost a fish's tail indeed, rather than a bird's legs,' the lobed feet in shape like a horse-chestnut leaf. His habits are as curious as his structure. His nest is a raft made of a mass of water-weeds, moored to the rushes or to a drooping branch, and sometimes it breaks from its moorings and floats away, carrying eggs and sitting bird on it. On quitting the nest the bird invariably draws a coverlet of wet weeds over the eggs; the nest in appearance is then nothing but a bunch of dead vegetable rubbish floating in the water. When the young are out of the eggs, the parent birds are accustomed to take them under their wings, just as a man might take a parcel under his arm, and dive into the water.

Another curious habit of the dabchick was discovered during the summer of 1896 in Clissold Park, when, for the second time, a pair of these birds settled in the too small piece of water at that place. Unfortunately, their nest was attacked and repeatedly destroyed by the moorhens, who took a dislike to these 'new chums,' and by the swans, who probably found that the wet materials used by the little grebe in building its nest were good to eat. Now, it was observed that when the nest was made on deep water, where the swans could swim up to it, the dabchicks defended it by diving and pecking at, or biting, the webbed feet of the assailants under water. It was a curious duel between a pigmy and a giant--one a stately man-of-war floating on the water, the other a small submerged torpedo, very active and intelligent. The swans were greatly disconcerted and repeatedly driven off by means of this strategy, but in the end the brave little divers were beaten, and reared no young.

The moral of this incident, which applies not only to Clissold but to Brockwell, Dulwich, and to a dozen other parks, is that you cannot have a big aquatic happy family in a very small pond.

But it is extremely encouraging to all those who wish for a 'better friendship' with the fowls of the air to find that this contest was watched with keen interest and sympathy with the defenders by the superintendent of a London park and the park constables.

It is curious to note that the three species we have been considering, differing so widely in their structures and habits, should be so closely associated in the history of London wild bird life. That they should have established colonies at very nearly about the same time, and very nearly at the same centre, from which they have subsequently spread over the metropolis; and that this centre, the cradle of the London races of these birds, should continue to be their most favoured resort. Seeing the numbers of wood-pigeons to-day, and their tameness everywhere, the statement will seem almost incredible to many readers that only fifteen years ago, one spring morning, the head gardener at Buckingham Palace, full of excitement, made a hurried visit to a friend to tell him that a pair of these birds had actually built a nest on a tree in the Palace grounds. Up till now the birds are most numerous in this part of London. The moorhen, I believe, bred first at St. James's Park about seventeen years ago; a few days ago--January 1898--I saw twelve of these birds in a little scattered flock feeding in the grass in this park. In no other public park in London can so many be seen together. The dabchick first bred in St. James's Park about fifteen years ago, and last summer, 1897, as many as seven broods were brought out. In no other London park were there more than two broods.

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The three species described are the only permanent additions in recent years to the wild bird life of the metropolis. But when it is considered that their colonies were self-planted, and have shown a continuous growth, while great changes of decrease and increase have meanwhile been going on in the old-established colonies, we find good reason for the hope that other species, previously unknown to the metropolis, will be added from time to time. We know that birds attract birds, both their own and other kinds. Even now there may be some new-comers--pioneers and founders of fresh colonies--whose presence is unsuspected, or known only to a very few observers. I have been informed by Mr. Howard Saunders that he has seen the stock-dove in one of the West-end parks, and that a friend of his had independently made the discovery that this species is now a visitor to, and possibly a resident in, London. One would imagine the stock-dove to be a species well suited to thrive with us, as it would find numberless breeding-holes both in the decayed trees in the parks and in big buildings, in which to rear its young in safety. I should prefer to see the turtle-dove, a much prettier and more graceful bird, with a better voice, but beggars must not be choosers; with the stock-dove established, London will possess three of the four doves indigenous in these islands, and the turtle-dove--at present an annual breeder in woods quite near to London--may follow by-and-by to complete the quartette.