NORTHERN HORNED LARK 325 



have to be fed; and the Duck Hawk. The Herring Gull does not 

 greatly disturb this species, for it hunts chiefly along the lake-shores 

 and coast and not in the high country of the interior. 



"Hoyt's Horned Lark leaves Southampton for the south among 

 the earlier fall migrants. It has entirely disappeared before the last 

 of the Snow Buntings, redpolls, pipits, and Lapland Longspurs have 

 gone." 



Winter.— According to the 1931 Check-list, Hoyt's horned lark 

 wanders southward in fall and winter to Nevada, Utah, Kansas, 

 Michigan, Ohio, New York, and Connecticut, thus spreading out over 

 a wide winter range and apparently thinly distributed and mixed 

 with some other subspecies. Walker and Trautman (1936) say that 

 in central Ohio, for example — 



Hoyt's Horned Lark (Otocoris alpestris hoyti) is by far the rarest of the 

 three races that occur in this region. Most of our records are of one or two 

 individuals associated with large flocks of 0. a. alpestris. These birds, with 

 the white superciliary line and pale dorsal coloration of praficola, but fully as 

 large as the alpestris with which they associate, are not difficult to identify 

 in the field. The greatest number recorded, on December 29, 1928, at Buckeye 

 Lake, was five in a flock estimated to contain 100 individuals of alpestris. Many 

 large winter flocks of larks which we have carefully examined contained no 

 hoyti nor have we found any flocks composed entirely of hoyti. * * * The 

 available central Ohio records for this race range from November 26 to March 17. 

 Upon a few occasions we have heard a short song from individuals of this race, 

 and twice our attention was first attracted to the birds by a peculiar quality 

 of the voice which seemed distinctly different from that of alpestris. 



OTOCORIS ALPESTRIS ALPESTRIS (Linnaeus) 



NORTHERN HORNED LARK 



Plates 46, 47 



HABITS 



The horned larks form a most plastic species that has been split 

 into a large number of subspecies, more or less recognizable, scattered 

 over much of the northern portions of North America, Europe, and 

 Asia. Our northern horned lark, O. a. alpestris, stands as the type of 

 the widely distributed species, because the name given by Linnaeus 

 was based on Catesby's bird that was supposed to have come from 

 somewhere in the Carolinas. But the European race, O. a. flava, 

 is closely related to it and was once supposed to be identical with 

 it. The northern horned lark is one of the largest and one of the 

 darker-colored races of the North American subspecies. It might 

 well have been called the northeastern horned lark, for Hoyt's horned 

 lark ranges fully as far north and the pallid horned lark ranges much 

 farther north than alpestris. 



324726—42 22 



