Dockett was the home of the Birds. Sir Charles's evidence before the Select Committee on the Thames as to the destruction of kingfishers led to a prohibition of all shooting on the river, and to an increase of these lovely birds. In 1897 he had two of their nests at Dockett Eddy. His acres of willow-grown all-but-island were made a sanctuary for birds, and therefore from Dockett only, of all his homes, cats were kept away. Nests were counted and cherished; it was a great year when a cuckoo's egg was discovered among the linnet's clutch, and its development was watched in breathless interest. Owls were welcome visitors; and the swans had no better nesting-place on the Thames than the lower end of Dockett. They and their annual progeny of cygnets were the appointed charge of Jim Haslett, Dilke's ferryman and friend. Pensioners upon the house, they used to appear in stately progress before the landing raft--the mother perhaps with several little ones swarming on her back or nestling in her wings, and from time to time splashing off into the water. Always at their appearance, in answer to Sir Charles's special call, a cry of 'Swan's bread' would be raised, and loaf after loaf would disappear down their capacious throats. A place with such privileges was not likely to be undisputed, and many times there were battles royal against 'invaders from the north,' as Sir Charles called the Chertsey swans who came to possess themselves of the Dockett reach and its amenities. Swan charged swan, with plumage bristling and wings dilated, but not alone they fought; Jim Haslett and his employer took part against the invaders, beating them off with sticks; and even in the night, when sound of that warfare rose, the master of Dockett was known to scull out in a dinghy, in his night gear, carrying a bedroom candlestick to guide his blows in the fray. Evening and morning he would steal along the bank in his dinghy, counting and observing the water-voles, which he was accustomed to feed with stewed prunes and other dishes, while they sat nibbling, squirrel-like, with the dainty clasped in their hands. A few gay beds of annuals by the house, a purple clematis on the verandah, and a mass of syringa at the landing-stage, were all the garden permitted; roughly mown grass paths here and there led through the wild growth of nature, where the willows met overhead. Such was his summer home, described in the lines of Tibullus which were carved on the doorway of the larger house: 'Jam modo iners possim epntentus vivere parvo Nec semper longae deditus esse viae, Sed canis aestivos ortus vitare sub umbra Arboris, ad rivos praetereuntis aquae.' [Footnote: Thus translated by the Rev. W. Tuckwell: 'Here, fancy-free, and scorning needless show, Let me from Life's dull round awhile retreat, Lulled by the full-charged stream's unceasing flow, Screened by tall willows from the dog-star's heat.']