SKYLARK. 617 



' ' The daisied lea he loves, where tufts of grass 

 Luxuriant crown the ridge ; there, with his mate, 

 He founds their lowly house, of withered bents. 

 And coarsest speargrass ; next, the inner work 

 With finer, and still finer fibres lays, 

 Rounding it curious with his speckled breast." 



The eggs, from three to five in number, are subject to a 

 good deal of variety : the ground-colour is french-white, but 

 generally so obscured by a freckling or numerous small 

 blotches of olive-brown or hair-brown that little else is 

 visible ; sometimes patches of pale lavender are also present 

 and occasionally the ground-colour is greyish-white, in which 

 case the mottling is usually of a dull reddish-brown and the 

 whole egg has a warmer appearance, but still more abnormally- 

 coloured eggs are not unfrequent. They measure from '99 

 to "87 by from '73 to '62 in. The young are hatched in 

 about fifteen days, and those of the first brood are fledged by 

 about the middle of May. The attachment of the parents 

 to their offspring is very strong and many instances are 

 known of their removing the eggs or helpless young under 

 the fear of impending danger, or when any one has meddled 

 with the nest, though the act of transfer has been but seldom 

 witnessed. Jesse indeed was informed by a friend that he 

 had observed it on one occasion, but then it was not suc- 

 cessful, for the old bird in its flight dropped the young one 

 it was carrying in its claws, which was thus killed by the fall 

 from a height of about thirty feet. Not always however is 

 resort had to this expedient. Blyth (Nat. 1837, p. 102) de- 

 scribes a case of which he was told wherein the upper part 

 of a Skylark's nest having been shaved off" by the scythe, 

 and the surrounding grass levelled by the mowers, without 

 the female, who was sitting on her young, flying away, she 

 was found about an hour afterwards to have constructed a 

 dome of dry grass over the nest during the interval ; thus 

 securing, as in the case of the Meadow-Pipit already men- 

 tioned (pages 577, 578), a continuance of shelter. 



Skylarks constantly, and with evident delight, dust them- 

 selves, especially in sunny weather, scratching a slight hollow 

 in the ground, shuffling and rubbing their bodies against its 

 VOL. I. 4 k 



