CHAPTER VII

LONDON'S LITTLE BIRDS

Number of species, common and uncommon--The London sparrow--His predominance, hardiness, and intelligence--A pet sparrow--Breeding irregularities--A love-sick bird--Sparrow shindies: their probable cause--'Sparrow chapels'--Evening in the parks--The starling--His independence--Characteristics--Blackbird, thrush, and robin--White blackbirds--The robin--Decrease in London--Habits and disposition.

There are not more than about twenty species of small passerine birds that live all the year in London proper. The larger wild birds that breed in London within the five-mile radius are eight species, or if we add the semi-domestic pigeon or rock-dove, there are nine. Of the twenty small birds, it is surprising to find that only five can be described as really common, including the robin, which in recent years has ceased to be abundant in the interior parks, and has quite disappeared from the squares, burial grounds, and other small open spaces. The five familiar species are the sparrow, starling, blackbird, song-thrush or throstle, and robin, and in the present chapter these only will be dealt with. All the other resident species found in London proper, or inner London--missel-thrush, wren, hedge-sparrow, nuthatch, tree-creeper, tits of five species, chaffinch, bullfinch, greenfinch, and yellowhammer, also the summer visitants, and some rare residents occasionally to be found breeding on the outskirts of the metropolis--will be spoken of in subsequent chapters descriptive of the parks and open spaces.

Here once more the sparrow takes precedence. 'What! the sparrow again!' the reader may exclaim; 'I thought we had quite finished with that little bird, and were now going on to something else.' Unfortunately, as we have seen, there is little else to go on to until we get to the suburbs, and that little bird the sparrow is not easily finished with. Besides, common as he is, intimately known to every man, woman, and child in the metropolis, even to the meanest gutter child in the poorest districts, it is always possible to find something fresh to say of a bird of so versatile a mind, so highly developed, so predominant. He must indeed be gifted with remarkable qualities to have risen to such a position, to have occupied, nay conquered, London, and made its human inhabitants food-providers to his nation; and, finally, to have kept his possession so long without any decay of his pristine vigour, despite the unhealthy conditions. He does not receive, nor does he need, that fresh blood from the country which we poor human creatures must have, or else perish in the course of a very few generations. Nor does he require change of air. It is commonly said that 'town sparrows' migrate to the fields in summer, to feast on corn 'in the milk,' and this is true of our birds in the outlying suburbs, who live in sight of the fields; farther in, the sparrow never leaves his London home. I know that _my_ sparrows--a few dozen that breed and live under my eyes--never see the country, nor any park, square, or other open space.

The hardiness and adaptiveness of the bird must both be great to enable it to keep its health and strength through the gloom and darkness of London winters. There is no doubt that many of our caged birds would perish at this season if they did not feed by gas or candle light. When they do not so feed it is found that the mortality, presumably from starvation, is very considerable. During December and January the London night is nearly seventeen hours in length, as it is sooner dark and later light than in the country; while in cold and foggy weather the birds feed little or not at all. They keep in their roosting-holes, and yet they do not appear to suffer. After a spell of frosty and very dark weather I have counted the sparrows I am accustomed to observe, and found none missing.

But the sparrow's chief advantage over other species doubtless lies in his greater intelligence. That ineradicable suspicion with which he regards the entire human race, and which one is sometimes inclined to set down to sheer stupidity, is, in the circumstances he exists in, his best policy. He has good cause to doubt the friendliness of his human neighbours, and his principle is, not to run risks; when in doubt, keep away. Thus, when the roads are swept the sparrows will go to the dirt and rubbish heaps, and search in them for food; then they will fly up to any window-sill and eat the bread they find put there for them. But let them see any rubbish of any description there, anything but bread--a bit of string, a chip of wood, a scrap of paper, white or blue or yellow, or a rag, or even a penny piece, and at the first sight of it away they will dart, and not return until the dangerous object has been removed. A pigeon or starling would come and take the food without paying any attention to the strange object which so startled the sparrow. They are less cunning. Without doubt there are many boys and men in all parts of London who amuse themselves by trying to take sparrows, and the result of their attempts is that the birds decline to trust anyone.

In this extreme suspiciousness, and in their habits generally, all sparrows appear pretty much alike to us. When we come to know them intimately, in the domestic state, we find that there is as much individual character in sparrows as in other highly intelligent creatures. The most interesting tame sparrow I have known in London was the pet of a lady of my acquaintance. This bird, however, was not a cockney sparrow from the nest: he was hatched on the other side of the Channel, and his owner rescued him, when young and scarce able to fly, from some street urchins in a suburb of Paris, who were playing with and tormenting him. In his London home he grew up to be a handsome bird, brighter in plumage than our cock sparrows usually seem, even in the West-end parks. He was strongly attached to his mistress, and liked to play with and to be caressed by her; when she sat at work he would perch contentedly by her side by the half-hour chirruping his sparrow-music, interspersed with a few notes borrowed from caged songsters. He displayed a marked interest in her dress and ornaments, and appeared to take pleasure in richly coloured silks and satins, and in gold and precious stones. But all these things did not please him in the same degree, and the sight of some ornaments actually angered him: he would scold and peck at the brooch or necklace, or whatever it was, which he did not like, and if no notice was taken at first, he would work himself into a violent rage, and the offensive jewel would have to be taken off and put out of sight. He also had his likes and dislikes among the inmates and guests in the house. He would allow me to sit by him for an hour, taking no notice, but if I made any advance he would ruffle up his plumage, and tell me in his unmistakable sparrow-language to keep my distance. Once he took a sudden violent hatred to his owner's maid; no sooner would she enter the room where the sparrow happened to be than he would dart at her face and peck and beat her with his wings; and as he could not be made to like, nor even to tolerate her, she had to be discharged. It was, however, rare for him to abuse his position of first favourite so grossly as on this occasion. He was on the whole a good-tempered bird, and had a happy life, spending the winter months each year in Italy, where his mistress had a country house, and returning in the spring to London. Then, very unexpectedly, his long life of eighteen years came to an end; for up to the time of dying he showed no sign of decadence. To the last his plumage and disposition were bright, and his affection for his mistress and love for his own music unabated.

After all, it must be said that the sparrow, as a pet, has his limitations; he is not, mentally, as high as the crow, aptly described by Macgillivray as the 'great sub-rational chief of the kingdom of birds.' And however luxurious the home we may give him, he is undoubtedly happier living his own independent life, a married bird, making slovenly straw nests under the tiles, and seeking his food in the gutter.

Many years ago Dr. Gordon Stables said, in an article on the sparrow, that he felt convinced from his own observation of these birds that curious irregularities in their domestic or matrimonial relations were of very frequent occurrence, a fact which the ornithologists had overlooked. Last summer I had proof that such irregularities do occur, but I very much doubt that they are so common as he appears to believe.

I had one pair of sparrows breeding in a hole under the eaves at the top of the house, quite close to a turret window, from which I look down upon and observe the birds, and on the sill of which I place bread for them. This pair reared brood after brood, from April to November, and so long as they found bread on the window-sill they appeared to feed their young almost exclusively on it, although it is not their natural food; but there was no green place near where caterpillars might be found, and I dare say the young sparrow has an adaptive stomach. At all events broods of four and five were successively brought out and taught to feed on the window-sill. After a few days' holiday the old birds would begin to tidy up the nest to receive a fresh clutch of eggs. In July I noticed that a second female, the wife, as it appeared, of a neighbouring bird, had joined the first pair, and shared in the tasks of incubation and of feeding the young. The cast-off cock-sparrow had followed her to her new home, and was constantly hanging about the nest trying to coax his wife to go back to him. Day after day, and all day long, he would be there, and sitting on the slates quite close to the nest he would begin his chirrup--chirrup--chirrup; and gradually as time went on, and there was no response, he would grow more and more excited, and throw his head from side to side, and rock his body until he would be lying first on one side, then the other, and after a while he would make a few little hops forward, trailing his wings and tail on the slates, then cast himself down once more. Something in his monotonous song with its not unmusical rhythm, and his extravagant love-sick imploring gestures and movements, reminded me irresistibly of Chevalier in the character of Mr. 'Enry 'Awkins--his whole action on the stage, the thin piping cockney voice, the trivial catching melody, and, I had almost added, the very words--

So 'elp me bob, I'm crazy! Lizer, you're a daisy! Won't yer share my 'umble 'ome? Oh, Lizer! sweet Lizer!

And so on, and on, until one of the birds in the nest would come out and furiously chase him away. Then he would sit on some chimney-pipe twenty or thirty yards off, silent and solitary; but by-and-by, seeing the coast clear, he would return and begin his passionate pleading once more.

This went on until the young birds were brought out, after which they all went away for a few days, and then the original pair returned. No doubt 'Enry 'Awkins had got his undutiful doner back.

The individual sparrow is, however, little known to us: we regard him rather as a species, or race, and he interests the mass of people chiefly in his social character when he is seen in companies, and crowds, and multitudes. He is noisiest and attracts most attention when there is what may be called a 'shindy' in the sparrow community. Shindies are of frequent occurrence all the year round, and may arise from a variety of causes; my belief is that, as they commonly take place at or near some favourite nesting or roosting site, they result from the sparrow's sense of proprietorship and his too rough resentment of any intrusion into his own domain. Sparrows in London mostly remain paired all the year, and during the winter months roost in the breeding-hole, often in company with the young of the last-raised brood. Why all the neighbours rush in to take part in the fight is not so easy to guess: possibly they come in as would-be peace-makers, or policemen, but are themselves so wildly excited that they do nothing except to get into each other's way and increase the confusion.

Of more interest are those daily gatherings of a pacific nature at some favourite meeting-place, known to Londoners as a 'sparrows' chapel.' A large tree, or group of trees, in some garden, square, or other space, is used by the birds, and here they are accustomed to congregate at various times, when the rain is over, or when a burst of sunshine after gloomy weather makes them glad, and at sunset. Their chorus of ringing chirruping sounds has an exceedingly pleasant effect; for although compared with the warblers' singing it may be a somewhat rude music, by contrast with the noise of traffic and raucous cries from human throats it is very bright and glad and even beautiful, voicing a wild, happy life.

It is interesting and curious to find that this habit of concert-singing at sunset, although not universal, is common among passerine birds in all regions of the globe. And when a bird has this habit he will not omit his vesper song, even when the sun is not visible and when rain is falling. In some mysterious way he knows that the great globe is sinking beneath the horizon. Day is over, he can feed no more until to-morrow, in a few minutes he will be sleeping among the clustering leaves, but he must sing his last song, must join in that last outburst of melody to express his overflowing joy in life.

This is a habit of our sparrow, and even on the darkest days, when days are shortest, any person desirous of hearing the birds need only consult the almanac to find out the exact time of sunset, then repair to a 'chapel,' and he will not be disappointed.

In some of the parks, notably at Battersea, where the birds are in thousands, the effect of so many voices all chirruping together is quite wonderful, and very delightful.

The time will come, let us hope, when for half a dozen species of small birds in London we shall have two dozen, or even fifty; until then the sparrow, even the common gutter-sparrow, is a bird to be thankful for.

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The starling ranks second to the sparrow in numbers; but albeit second, the interval is very great: the starlings' thousands are but a small tribe compared to the sparrows' numerous nation.

It has been said that the starling is almost as closely associated with man as the sparrow. That is hardly the case; in big towns the sparrow, like the rat and black beetle, although not in so unpleasant a way, is parasitical on man, whereas the starling is perfectly independent. He frequents human habitations because they provide him with suitable breeding-holes; he builds in a house, or barn, or church tower, just as he does in a hole in a tree in a wild forest, or a hole in the rock on some sea-cliff, where instead of men and women he has puffins, guillemots, and gannets for neighbours. The roar of the sea or the jarring noises of human traffic and industry--it is all one to the starling. That is why he is a London bird. In the breeding season he is to be found diffused over the entire metropolis, an astonishing fact when we consider that he does not, like the sparrow, find his food in the roads, back gardens, and small spaces near his nest, but, like the rook, must go a considerable distance for it.

Two seasons ago (1896) one pair of starlings had their nest close to my house--a treeless district, most desolate. When the young were hatched I watched the old birds going and coming, and on leaving the nest they invariably flew at a good height above the chimney-pots and telegraph wires, in the direction of the Victoria Gate of Hyde Park. They returned the same way. It is fully two miles to the park in that direction. The average number of eggs in a starling's nest is six; and assuming that these birds had four or five young, we can imagine what an enormous labour it must have been to supply them with suitable insect food, each little beakful of grubs involving a return journey of at least four miles; and the grubs would certainly be very much more difficult to find on the trodden sward of Hyde Park than in a country meadow. I pitied these brave birds every day, when I watched them from my turret window, going and coming, and at the same time I rejoiced to think that this pair, and hundreds of other pairs with nests just as far from their scanty feeding-grounds, were yet able to rear their young each season in London.

For the starling is really a splendid bird as birds are with us in this distant northern land--splendid in his spangled glossy dress of metallic purple, green, and bronze, a singer it is always pleasant to listen to, a flyer in armies and crowds whose aërial evolutions in autumn and winter, before settling to roost each evening, have long been the wonder and admiration of mankind. He inhabits London all the year round, but not in the same numbers: in the next chapter more will be said on this point. He also sings throughout the year; on any autumn or winter day a small company or flock of a dozen or two of birds may be found in any park containing large trees, and it is a delight that never grows stale to listen to the musical conversation, or concert of curiously contrasted sounds, perpetually going on among them. The airy whistle, the various chirp, the clink-clink as of a cracked bell, the low chatter of mixed harsh and musical sounds, the kissing and finger-cracking, and those long metallic notes, as of a saw being filed not unmusically, or (as a friend suggests) as of milking a cow in a tin pail;--however familiar you may be with the starling, you cannot listen to one of their choirs without hearing some new sound. There is more variety in the starling than in any other species, and not only in his language; if you observe him closely for a short time, he will treat you to a sudden and surprising transformation. Watch him when absorbed in his own music, especially when emitting his favourite saw-filing or milking-a-cow-in-a-tin-pail sounds: he trembles on his perch--shivers as with cold--his feathers puffed out, his wings hanging as if broken, his beak wide open, and the long pointed feathers of his swollen throat projected like a ragged beard. He is then a most forlorn-looking object, apparently broken up and falling to pieces; suddenly the sounds cease, and in the twinkling of an eye he is once more transformed into the neat, compact, glossy, alert starling!

Something further may be said about the pair of starlings that elected to breed the summer before last in sight of my top windows, in that brick desert where my home is. When they brought out and led their young away, I wondered if they would ever return to such a spot. Surely, thought I, they will have some recollection of the vast labour of rearing a nestful of young at such a distance from their feeding-ground, and when summer comes once more will be tempted to settle somewhere nearer to the park. The Albert Memorial, for instance, gorgeous with gold and bright colour, might attract them; certainly there was room for them, since it had in the summer of 1896 but one pair of starlings for tenants. It was consequently something of a surprise when, on March 23 last spring, early in the morning, the birds reappeared at the same place, and spent over an hour in fluttering about and exploring the old breeding-hole, perching on the slates and chimney-pots, and clinging to the brick wall, fluttering their wings, screaming and whistling as if almost beside themselves with joy to be at home once more.

Brave and faithful starlings! we hardly deserve to have you back, since London has not been too kind to her feathered children. Quite lately she has driven out her rooks, who were faithful too; and long ago she got rid of her ravens; and to her soaring kites she meted out still worse treatment, pulling down their last nest in 1777 from the trees in Gray's Inn Gardens, and cutting open the young birds to find out, in the interests of ornithological science, what they had eaten!

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Between the starling and the next in order, the blackbird, there is again a very great difference with regard to numbers. The former counts thousands, the latter hundreds. Between blackbird and song-thrush, or throstle, there is not a wide difference, but if we take the whole of London, the blackbird is much more numerous. After these two, at a considerable distance, comes the robin. In suburban grounds and gardens these three common species are equally abundant. But in these same private places, which ring the metropolis round with innumerable small green refuges, or sanctuaries, several other species which are dying out in the parks and open spaces of inner London are also common--wren, hedge-sparrow, blue, cole, and great tits, chaffinch, and greenfinch--and of these no more need be said in this chapter.

As we have seen, there is always a great interest shown (by the collector especially) in that not very rare phenomenon, an abnormally white bird. But in London the bird-killers are restrained, and the white specimen is sometimes able to keep his life for a few or even for several months. Recently (1897) a very beautiful white blackbird was to be seen in Kensington Gardens, in the Flower Walk, east of the Albert Memorial. He was the successor to a wholly milk-white blackbird that lived during the summer of 1895 in the shrubberies of Kensington Palace, and was killed by some scoundrel, who no doubt hoped to sell its carcass to some bird-stuffer. Its crushed body was found by one of the keepers in a thick holly-bush close to the public path; the slayer had not had time to get into the enclosure to secure his prize.

The other bird had some black and deep brown spots on his mantle, and a few inky black tail and wing feathers--a beautiful Dominican dress. But when I first saw him, rushing out of a black holly-bush, one grey misty morning in October, his exceeding whiteness startled me, and I was ready to believe that I had beheld a blackbird's ghost, when the bird, startled too, emitted his prolonged chuckle, proving him to be no supernatural thing, but only a fascinating freak of nature. He lived on, very much admired, until the end of March last year (1897), having meanwhile found a mate, and was then killed by a cat.

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The robin, although common as ever in all the more rural parts of London--the suburban districts where there are gardens with shrubs and trees--is now growing sadly scarce everywhere in the interior of the metropolis. In 1865 the late Shirley Hibberd wrote that this bird was very common in London: 'Robins are seen among the hay-carts at Whitechapel, Smithfield, and Cumberland Markets, in all the squares, in Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, and other gardens, in the open roadway of Farringdon Street, Ludgate Hill, the Strand, and Blackfriars Road; nay, I once saw a robin on a lovely autumn afternoon perch upon the edge of a gravestone in St. Paul's Churchyard and trill out a carol as sweetly as in any rural nook at home.'

Now the robin has long vanished from all these public places, even from the squares that are green, and that he is becoming very scarce in all the interior parks I shall have occasion to show in later chapters. It is a great pity that this should be so, as this bright little bird is a universal favourite on account of his confidence in and familiarity with man, and his rare beauty, and because, as becomes a cousin of the nightingale, he is a very sweet singer. Moreover, just as his red breast shines brightest in autumn and winter, when all things look grey and desolate, or white with the snow's universal whiteness, so does his song have a peculiar charm and almost unearthly sweetness in the silent songless season. It is not strange that in credulous times man's imagination should have endowed so loved a bird with impossible virtues, that it should have been believed that he alone--heaven's little feathered darling--cared for 'the friendless bodies of unburied men' and covered them with leaves, and was not without some supernatural faculties. Nor can it be said that all these pretty fables have quite faded out of the rustic mind. But, superstition apart, the robin is still a first favourite and dear to everyone, and some would gladly think he is a _better_ bird, in the sense of being gentler, sweeter-tempered, more affectionate and _human_, than other feathered creatures. But it is not so, the tender expression of his large dark eye is deceptive. The late Mr. Tristram-Valentine, writing of the starling in London, its neat, bright, glossy appearance, compared with that of the soot-blackened disreputable-looking sparrow, says 'the starling always looks like a gentleman.' In like manner the robin will always be a robin, and act like one, in London or out of it--the most unsocial, fierce-tempered little duellist in the feathered world. Now I wish to point out that this fierce intolerant spirit of our bird is an advantage in London, if we love robins and are anxious to have plenty of them.

It is a familiar fact that at the end of summer the adult robins disappear; that they remain in hiding in the shade of the evergreens and thick bushes until they have got a new dress, and have recovered their old vigour; that when they return to the world, so to speak, and find their young in possession of their home and territory, they set themselves to reconquer it. For the robin will not tolerate another robin in that portion of a garden, shrubbery, orchard, or plantation which he regards as his very own. A great deal of fighting then takes place between old and young birds, and these fights in many instances end fatally to one of the combatants. The raven has the same savage disposition and habit with regard to its young; and when a young raven, in disposition a 'chip of the old block,' refuses to go when ordered, and fights to stay, it occasionally happens that one of the birds gets killed. But the raven has a tremendous weapon, a stone axe, in his massive beak; how much greater the fury and bulldog tenacity of the robin must be to kill one of his own kind with so feeble a weapon as his small soft bill! At the end of the summer of 1896 two robins were observed fighting all day long in the private gardens of Kensington Palace, the fight ending in the death of one of the birds.

Finally, as a result of all the chasing and fighting that goes on, the young birds are driven out to find homes for themselves. In London, in the interior parks, not many young robins are reared, but many of those that have been reared in the suburban districts drift into London, and altogether a considerable number of birds roam about the metropolis in search of some suitable green spot to settle in; and I will only add here, in anticipation of what will be said in a later chapter, that if suitable places were provided for them, the robins would increase year by year from this natural cause.

There are other movements of robins in London which it will be more in order to notice in the next chapter.