317 



Meadow-larks. — That good genius of the farm, the meadow-lark, 

 was evidently at home almost everywhere on the farm premises, as 

 is shown especially by the numbers per square mile, which are ap- 

 proximately equal for stubble fields, meadows, pastures, and fields of 

 young wheat (Table VI.). These birds were about a fourth as numer- 

 ous in corn fields, and a fifth as numerous on plowed ground, as in 

 meadows and fields of stubble, and somewhat more numerous in these 

 latter situations than in pastures and young wheat; but taking into 

 account the actual crop areas in the country covered (Table VII.) 

 we find meadow-larks so distributed through these crops as to be 

 about equally common in pastures and stubble fields, and about half 

 as common in corn, with only 7 per cent, of their number in wheat 

 and meadow-lands respectively. Their recorded numbers on plowed 

 ground amounted to only 1 per cent, of the whole number seen. The 

 occurrence of 86 of these birds per square mile in fields of young 

 wheat suggests a possible economic depredation, of which, in fact, 

 they have been sometimes accused. 



Cowbirds. — The cowbird's record of occurrence for this trip 

 would be almost exclusively that of a pasture and meadow species 

 if it had not been for a flock of 62 seen in a field of sorghum, feeding 

 on the seeds. Even including these in the ratios, 60 per cent, were 

 in pastures and 9 per cent, in meadows, the remaining distribution be- 

 ing merely a scattering one. Tested by the number of species per 

 square mile in each crop, as shown by Table VI., the cowbird shows 

 no very decided choice between pastures and meadow-lands, averag- 

 ing 89 per square mile for the former and 98 for the latter. The 

 species was evidently migrating at the time, as only one example 

 was seen during the last seventy miles of the trip. 



It should be noted at this point that these generalizations con- 

 cerning gregarious birds, which roost in company or feed in flocks, 

 require a much larger body of data than those for birds of solitary 

 habit. The averages of this paper are hence more likely to require 

 amendment for blackbirds, cowbirds, and crows, as information ac- 

 cumulates, than for the other species of our list. 



Horned Larks. — The birds of this species found in central Illi- 

 nois were all of the prairie variety, praticola. With habits much like 

 those of the meadow-lark, they differed from that species widely 

 in their local distribution, especially in their preference for plowed 

 ground, on which they occurred at the rate of 230 per square mile as 

 against 18 meadow-larks for the same area. Their next preference 

 was for pastures, where 97 per square mile were found, the remainder 

 occurring mostly on stubble and young wheat, 25 and 29 per square 

 mile respectively. Nearly two thirds of their actual numbers were 



