Bird Sanctuaries in London

Abstract

THE industry of the voluntary observers who report to the Committee on Bird Sanctuaries in the Royal Parks (England) gives a wonderfully full picture of bird-life in Greater London (Report of Committee for 1934. London: H.M. Stationery Office. 6d. net.). In Richmond Park, 56 species bred, and 38 other species were seen or heard; in Bushey and Hampton Court Parks, 52 species nested, including kingfisher and nightingale, and 26 others were seen. But the surprising thing is that, in the midst of the commotion of London itselfin Hyde Park and Kensington Gardensthere should appear visitors like the red-throated diver, the Slavonian grebe, and the golden-eye duck, all of them recorded for the first time in that area. It is said also that the Scandinavian form of the lesser black-backed gull appeared on the Serpentine in the autumn of 1933. Curious diversity in choice of roosting sites is shown by starlings and wood-pigeons: every evening about sunset, during autumn and winter, the latter leave St. James's Park, where there are plenty of suitable roosts, to spend the night in Battersea Park; and they make use of the very trees which some of the 2,000 starlings have sampled and abandoned before they continue their journey to roost in St. James's Park, which the pigeons have just left.