SAND DUNES AND SALT MARSHES 



there was a '' sore plague of strange mice " 

 in Essex, England, but that owls thronged 

 from all sides and helped to exterminate the 

 pests. Occasionally these owls vary their diet 

 with a bird, and I once started a short-eared 

 owl in the dunes who had been feasting on 

 a robin. A snowy owl in my collection smells 

 strongly of skunk. But the odor of skunk on 

 one's clothes does not necessarily mean that 

 one has eaten the animal! 



One of the characteristic bird notes heard 

 in the dunes in the fall is the sibilant squeaky 

 note of the horned lark. This northern bird 

 takes the place of the prairie horned lark 

 which in smaller numbers spends the sum- 

 mers. Indeed it begins to come during the 

 last of September before its smaller relative 

 is gone, and in November and December flocks 

 of fifty or a hundred are not uncommon in the 

 dunes. Toward the end of January and in 

 February and early March comparatively few 

 are to be found, while in the latter half of 

 March they again increase in numbers, but 

 are never so common as in the fall. Early 

 in April the last survivors of the winter leave 

 for the north. 



The horned lark is a handsomely marked 

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