PRAIRIE HORNED LARK 149 



72.) It was a picture ever to be remembered. Four 

 inches of snow fell when the young were a week old. I 

 had visited the nest the day before, so when I looked 

 from my bedroom window and saw the earth clothed in 

 a mantle of pure white, my first thoughts were of the 

 little, featherless, young birds. I made haste to visit 

 them. When I reached the vicinity of the nest I could 

 locate it only by the stake I had driven into the ground 

 to keep the golf players from stepping on it. Much to 

 my pleasure and surprise the little mother, with her gray 

 back and beady eyes, was snugly hovering over her 

 babies, while the drifting snow in the face of a stiff March 

 wind had nearly hidden her patient and warm little body. 

 That afternoon the snow on that southern exposed hill- 

 side melted, and the devoted little mother reaped her full 

 reward by rearing all four of her precious, tender off- 

 spring. The little fellows increased forty per cent in 

 weight the first four days. 



After watching the fidelity of the old birds to pa- 

 rental duty, and noting the frequency with which these 

 little ground birds were fed, one can easily understand 

 the rapid increase in their weight. The parents invari- 

 ably alighted on the ground a few feet from the nest and, 

 running quickly to its site, fed the young, cleaned the 

 nest and flew away. One of the birds kept close to the 

 nest most of the time, but occasionally both birds joined 

 in the chase of a particularly hard-to-catch moth. From 

 early morn till late at night these parents fed on an 

 average of every four minutes. No wonder the young 

 birds fairly burst into full-grown birdhood. 



