LONDON: Early this morning a cuckoo was calling from the outskirts of a wood in south London a bare five miles from the Festival of Britain Exhibition on the South Bank. Yesterday evening a swift flew by; and the day before a late swallow hurried over in the wake of a storm. It is difficult to realise as one enters the wood and walks among its fine oaks and beeches, that one is so near, in fact hemmed in by, the sprawling mass of Greater London.
From the top of a sycamore newly in leaf a chiffchaff is singing and next to it, halfway up a mountain ash, a willow-wren is pouring forth its sad little song. Within a week a wood-wren will be singing from a grove of beeches growing on a slope the song that sounds like a spun sixpence running down on a table. Hawfinches nest in the wood, but they are secretive birds and seldom seen, especially at nesting time. So are the sparrow-hawks, for all their conspicuousness when they emerge to soar on the up-currents created by the north wind beating against a neighbouring hill. More obvious are the jays and the carrion crows, which seem to be increasing here as elsewhere. One would like to see fewer of them and more of the blackcaps and whitethroats that are fighting a losing battle against the rising tide of bricks and mortar.
Walking among fine oaks and beeches it is difficult to realise that one is so near to the sprawling mass of Greater London
