326 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Most of US know the northern horned lark only as a winter visitor, 

 for few of us have enjoyed the privilege of seeing this hardy bird in 

 its summer home on the northern barrens. To my late friend and 

 companion. Dr. Charles W. Townsend (1923), belongs the credit for 

 the discovery of the southernmost breeding station now known of 

 this lark on the barren summits of the Shickshock Mountains, near 

 the northern coast of the Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec, and about 200 

 miles south of Canadian Labrador. On the tableland above tree 

 limit, on the summit of Mount Albert, 3,640 feet, he found a breeding 

 colony of northern horned larks and pipits. He secured two speci- 

 mens of the bird for identification, and says : 



It was breeding in considerable numbers, for, at a very moderate estimate, 

 I concluded there were twenty pairs. I saw several full-fledged young, and the 

 old birds flew about with insects in their bills, scolding me anxiously. Occa- 

 sionally I heard the flight song and saw the bird high in the air. * * * 



The summit of Mount Albert consists of a table-land some fifteen miles in 

 extent, rising a little at the edges to plunge down in chasms and precipices. 

 Protected by the northern rim of hard schists is a straggling forest of black 

 spruce and fir, rising to a height of five or six feet, with tops blasted by the 

 arctic gales, and, on its southern edge, a little lake imbedded in the mossy and 

 grassy tundra. Beyond are great plains of brown serpentine rock masses, riven 

 and heaved about by the frost, and beyond are other plains that appear almost 

 as green and smooth as a lawn. 



The flora is arctic in character, and comprises many species common to 

 Labrador, such as curlew-berry, Labrador tea, pale-leafed laurel, moss campion 

 and creeping birch and willows. 



Late in the spring and early in the summer of 1909 Dr. Townsend 

 and I cruised along the south coast of the Labrador Peninsula, the 

 north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, traveling from Quebec to 

 Esquimaux Point by steamer and from there to Natashquan, about 

 85 miles, in a small sailboat. On our arrival at Esquimaux Point, 

 on May 24, we saw small flocks of northern horned larks ; these were 

 evidently migrating birds, for on our return there on June 2 these 

 birds had all left. At Natashquan, on June 1, we collected a pair 

 on the open, dry tundra near a small pond a short distance inland ; 

 they were evidently breeding there, for the female showed the well- 

 known signs of incubation. This is probably the western limit of the 

 regular breeding range of the northern horned lark on this coast; 

 from this point eastward the coast becomes more progressively Arctic 

 in character. Audubon's breeding record was much farther east, 

 near Bras d'Or. 



In 1912 I spent the month of June in Newfoundland, where I 

 found the northern horned lark living and probably breeding on 

 the treeless and tundra-like plains about Gafftopsail near the center 

 of the island. During that same season I cruised down the north- 

 east coast of Newfoundland Labrador with Capt. Donald B. Mac- 



