Nature near London / by Richard Jefferies.

  • Richard Jefferies
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nature near London / by Richard Jefferies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    before the crops have risen, or after the stubble is ploughed. I should think that the corn farmers of Surrey lose more grain from the birds than the agriculturists whose tenancies are a hundred miles from London. In the comparatively wild or open districts to which I had been accustomed before I made these observations I cannot recollect ever seeing such vast numbers of birds. There were places, of course, where they were numerous, and there were several kinds more repre- sented than is the case here, and some that are scarcely represented at all. I have seen flocks of wood-pigeons immensely larger than any here; but then it was only occasionally They came, passed over, and were gone. Here the flocks, though not very numerous, seem always to be about. Sparrows crowd every hedge and field, their numbers are incredible; chaffinches are not to be counted; of greenfinches there must be thousands. From the railway even you can see them. I caught glimpses of a ploughed field recently sown one spring from the window of a railway carriage, every little clod of which seemed alive with small birds, principally sparrows, chaffinches, and greenfinches. There must have been thousands in that field alone. In autumn the numbers are even greater, or rather more apparent. One autumn some correspondence appeared lament- ing the scarcity of small birds (and again in the spring the same cry was raised); people said that they had walked along the roads or footpaths and there were none in the hedges. They were quite correct—the n
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