Bird-life in London.

  • William Miller
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bird-life in London. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    there I saw him, day by day, for some time, seeming to enjoy the fun of the utterly futile attempts to catch him. This bird, I learnt, had escaped from a caged pair on the lower of the two islands in the lake, and though he visits his wife pretty often, I am told that the keepers have never, even yet, been able to tempt him to share her confinement. Thrushes of two kinds are numerous; the blackbird often sings gloriously; and linnets and other small birds abound. Now and then one sees and hears some fine parrot, seated on a pleasant tree-perch, escaped from domestic pettings, and here enjoying himself till he is encaged again. On the lower island they have a smallish dove—what it is I do not know— which, I am told, breeds there, but does not fly much about the park. The turtle-dove I do not think I have ever seen in the park. In this early season it has been interesting to watch the sparrows building in the leafless Lombardy poplars by the lake, their many nests soon to be hidden by the fast-springing foliage. About a month ago, a ring-dove began to build her slender nest in a hawthorn tree, and she has been now for more than a week sitting on her eggs. There she sits, not far from Marl- borough House and the Old Palace, close to the broad asphalted walk crossed by thousands during the day ; and there nobody, so far as I can see, seems to notice her, though she far over- sits the rag of a nest through the sticks of which one can almost see the eggs. One morning I saw a large number of people gathered just under the nest, but all were looking at a regiment of soldiers marching with band past Buckingham Palace across the edge of the park. In a few days the nest will, I hope, be shrouded by the leaves. Up to Saturday, April 7, the bird was sitting with her head towards the east wind and the Horse Guards ; but on the Monday, with the change of wind, the bird’s head had turned towards Buckingham Palace and the west. This is the bird usually known as the wood-pigeon, which figures in poetry as the cushat dove. Thus it is called, for instance, in the beautiful description of summer-dawn on Loch Katrine in the beginning of the third canto of the “ Lady of the Lake.” This is an extract from Scott’s description:— “ Invisible in flecked sky, The lark sent down her revelry ; The blackbird and the speckled thrush Good morrow gave from brake and bush ; In answer coo’d the cushat dove Her notes of peace and rest and love.” It is strange that, in this beautiful passage, Scott, a careful observer, has made the female bird the singer. The same thing is done, too, by the peasant-poet, Clare, who, having been in early life a plough-boy, should have known all about the bird- life of the fields. This, besides in other places, he does in that lovely Shakespearian sonnet on the thrush’s nest, of which these are a few lines :—