. Birds in London . he Enfield ravens—The HydePark ravens—The Tower ravens—The carrion crow, rook,and jackdaw. Theee are not many crows in London; thenumber of the birds that dve left are indeed few%and, if we exclude the magpie and jay, there areonly three species. But the magpie and jaycannot be left out altogether, when we find bothspecies still existing at a distance of six and ahalf to seven miles from Charing Cross. Themagpie is all but lost; at the present time thereare no more than four birds inhabiting innerr^ondon, doubtless escaped from captivity, andafraid to leave tlie parks in wh
. Birds in London . he Enfield ravens—The HydePark ravens—The Tower ravens—The carrion crow, rook,and jackdaw. Theee are not many crows in London; thenumber of the birds that dve left are indeed few%and, if we exclude the magpie and jay, there areonly three species. But the magpie and jaycannot be left out altogether, when we find bothspecies still existing at a distance of six and ahalf to seven miles from Charing Cross. Themagpie is all but lost; at the present time thereare no more than four birds inhabiting innerr^ondon, doubtless escaped from captivity, andafraid to leave tlie parks in which they foundrefuge—those islands of verdure in the midst ofa sea, or desert, of houses. One bird, the sur-vivoi-of a pair, has his home in St. Jamess Park,and is tlie most intci-csting figure in that haunt CBOWS IN LONDON 21 of birds; a spirited creature, a great hater andpersecutor of the carrion crows when they other three consort together m EegentsPark; once or twice they have built a nest, but. THE LAST RAVEN failed to hatch their eggs. Probably allthree are females. When, some time ago,the Son of the Marshes wrote that themagpie had been extirpated in his owncounty of Surrey, and that to see it heshould have to visit the London parks, he madetoo much of these escaped birds, which may benumbered on the fingers of one hand. Yet weknow that the pie was formerly—even in this 22 BIRDS IN LONDON century—quite common in London. Yarrell, inhis British Birds, relates that he once sawtwenty-three togetlier in Kensington these gardens they bred, probably for the lasttime, in 1856. Xor, so far as I know, do anymagpies survive in the woods and thickets onthe outskirts of the metropolis, except at twospots in the south-west district. The fate ofthe last pair at Hampstead has been relatedby Harting, in Lobleys Hampstead Hill(London, 1889). For several years this pair hadtheir nest in an unclimbable tree at the Grove ;at length, one of the pair was shot b
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