220 Wii^d Birds and their Haunts 



THE SKYLARK (ALAUDA ARVENSIS). 



GENERIC characteristics : Upper parts light 

 reddish-brown, the middle and upwards of each 

 feather dark brown ; a whitish-smeary streak 

 above the eyes ; throat white ; neck and breast whitish ; 

 tinged with yellowish-red, and smeared with a darker 

 brown ; tail moderate. Average length seven and a 

 quarter inches. The eggs are greyish, more than or- 

 dinarily speckled with dark grey and brown. 



Many of the bygone poets have struck the lyre in these 

 well-known lines : — 



1 ' Hark ! hark ! the lark at Heaven's gate sings, 

 When Phoebus 'gins to rise." 



This universally known bird, which has charmed 

 generations of our country folk from time immemorial, 

 rich and poor, high and low, prince and peasant alike, is 

 plentifully distributed over the wholeof our islands from 

 John O'Groat's to the Lizard. In a country where the 

 plough was little known, and the cultivation of to-day had 

 not commenced, the localities of the skylark were in 

 extensive ranges of pasture land. Grazing lands, how- 

 ever, are still its favourite range, and it is often found in 

 large numbers where the upland sheep pastures com- 

 mence. 



In these localities, and among the grass ripe for hay, 

 it forms its nest and rears its young. Many a time, when 

 a boy, have I discovered the young larks, in their infancy, 

 scattered about the long grass after the passage of the 

 scythe. The reaping machine of modern days tells a 

 similar tale, viz., of the wholesale destruction of broods of 

 this beautiful songster. 



The male, it is said, sings the loudest during the period 

 of incubation, perched on a small elevated clod, or rising 

 above the spot with a rapid motion of the wings, and 

 during ascent pouring forth that melody which has been 

 so often the theme of our more homely poets, and is a 



