342 BULLETIN 179, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



OTOCORIS ALPESTRIS PRATICOLA Henshaw 



PRAIRIE HORNED LARK 



Plates 49-52 



HABITS 



CONTEIBTrTED BY GayLB PICKWELL * 



Out at the bleak end of the ecological series of bird habitats, 

 which begins with the heavy forests and ends with the barrens, lives 

 America's only true lark, Otocoris alpestris (Linnaeus). In that 

 region extending from Missouri to the Atlantic and from Kansas 

 to Ontario the particular form of this lark is Otocoris alpestris prati- 

 Gola Henshaw, the prairie horned lark. Far from the treeless Arctics, 

 far from the deserts, this lark finds as its barrens the plowed fields of 

 the Midwest, the tree-denuded, wind-swept hilltops of the North- 

 eastern States, and those peculiarly unnatural and artificial barrens, 

 the hazards of these modern-day golf courses. 



If for no other reason than that here is a bird nesting where no 

 bird has a right to nest, a bird in a niche that demands not vegetation 

 but lack of it, a bird alone and unique in its nesting site without a 

 competitor and far out at the end of the series — if for no other reason 

 than this purely ecological one — the prairie horned lark invites close 

 study. But if we add to this the fact that it is a lark, a representative 

 of our only lark, with the song of a lark, the ways of a lark, and 

 many a habit and idiosyncrasy peculiarly its own, and that it is an 

 intriguing bird of the open field, then the bird becomes even more 

 interesting. 



The prairie horned lark, because of its tendency to occupy the 

 most barren regions as its home, interested me very early, for desultory 

 observations of this bird were begun while still a boy in eastern 

 Nebraska. The lark nests were found on the ridges of listed corn 

 and an observation of a song still remains clear and trenchant. We 

 were shocking wheat, hence it was mid-July, when a lark was seen 

 climbing the air for his song. We watched him against the vivid 

 sky during his long minutes aloft ; were amazed by that final headlong 

 drop to earth. 



Study of the prairie horned lark was initiated in eastern Nebraska, 

 continued intensively in northern Illinois (Evanston) for two years, 

 then transferred to Ithaca, N. Y., and concluded. Since that time 

 I have lived in California, where the prairie horned lark is replaced 

 by the California horned lark, a closely related subspecies. 



1 Derived largely from Pickwell, "The Prairie Horned Lark" (1931). 



