456 GRANIVOROUS BIRDS. 



they are more common at this season, and are particu- 

 larly numerous in South Carolina and Georgia, frequent- 

 ing open plains, old fields, common grounds, and the dry 

 shores and banks of bays and rivers, keeping constantly on 

 the ground, and roving about in families under the guid- 

 ance of the older birds, who, watching for any approaching 

 danger, give the alarm to the young in a plaintive call, very 

 similar to that which is uttered by the Sky-Lark in the 

 same circumstances. Inseparable in all their movements, 

 like the hen and her fostered chickens, they roost together 

 in a close ring or company, by the mere edge of some 

 sheltering weed or tuft of grass on the dry and gravelly 

 ground ; and, thickly and warmly clad, they abide the 

 frost and the storm with hardy indifference. They fly 

 rather high and loose, in scattered companies, and follow 

 no regular time of migration, but move onward only as 

 their present resources begin to fail. They are usually 

 fat, esteemed as food, and are frequently seen exposed for 

 sale in our markets. Their diet, as usual, consists of 

 various kinds of seeds which still remain on the grass 

 and weeds they frequent, and they also swallow a con- 

 siderable portion of gravel to assist their digestion. They 

 also collect the eggs and dormant larvae of insects when 

 they fall in their way. About the middle of March they 

 retire to the North, and are seen about the beginning of 

 May round Hudson's Bay, after which they are no more 

 observed till the return of autumn. They are said to 

 sing well ; rising into the air and warbling as they as- 

 cend, in the manner of the Sky-Lark of Europe. 



The length of the Shore Lark is something more than 7 inches, 

 and the alar extent about 12. A broad fan-shaped portion of black on 

 the breast, in which as well as in the black spot beneath the eye, the 

 feathers are slenderly edged with pale yellow ; back of the neck and 

 towards the shoulders greyish-brown, tinged with obscure rose-red. 

 Lesser coverts of the wings bright cinnamon ) greater wing-coverts 



