31 AUGUST 1929, Page 15

LONDON Brans.

-A good many places more or less near to London have peculiar attractions for birds. You might travel over a good part of the world and fail to find as many plover as congregate in the ellipse where our motors race. Again, you will be

surer of finding great wisps of snipe with a sprinkling of duck and teal, in the valley of the Wey, where it is almost suburban, than in the wilds of Ireland or the marshes of Wales or the English Fens. It is not only for the race of black-headed gulls that our towns prove an attraction superior to the wildest country.