It would be interesting to know how many of these
birds nested in the gardens. Some correspondents give this detail, some do not. In my experience of urban and suburban birds—and it is not at all extensive—a good many more birds try to nest and bring up young than succeed. I once watched a chiffchafrs nest at Dulwich ; and just when all seemed well and the young likely to fly a cat intervened. The two great enemies are the cat and the crow. The cats catch even the duck in the Green Park, and you may see them in quantity streaking across the road into Battersea Park towards evening. The greater crested grebe has tried to nest on some of the reservoirs but the eggs have always (so far as my information goes) been destroyed by crows, or presumably by crows. Is it, I wonder, generally known that in many places moorhen have developed the habit of pecking other birds' eggs, merely it seems "out of wantonness" ? And the reservoirs are thick with both moorhen and coot.
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