1 82 Family Alaudidj, 



FAMILY ALAUDIDJ-:. 



THE position in which Howard vSannders has phiccd this faniil_y does not 

 strike one as natural : it would certainly- have fitted in better with one's 

 sense of order in Nature, to have seen it placed next to the Motaciilidcc, 

 as in vSeel)ohm's " History of British Birds," and as evidently advocated b}' Dr. 

 Sharpc, to judge by his remarks on the family in the " Catalogue of Birds." 



It is difficult to imagine that the Larks can be more nearly related to the 

 Crows than to the Pipits, and one wishes that the author of the Manual had in 

 his arrangement borne out vSeebohm's opinion — "The Larks appear to bear the 

 same relation to the Pipits that the Thrushes do to the Warblers," or Jerdon's — 

 "The Larks may be said to grade to the P'inchcs on the one hand, through 

 Jloiifijniioi/Ia and PUciropluvics ; and, on the other, into the Pipits through 

 Corydallar 



The chief characteristic of the familj- is the scutellation at the back of 

 the tarsus; and it is probabl}' because of tliis peculiarity (and not becanse 

 they are allied to the Crows), that Howard Sannders subordinating his own 

 views, as he sa3-s, " to those of the majorit}- of the B. O. U. Committee re- 

 specting the positions of the Alaiiiiidic and the Coii'ida'' has placed the Larks 

 at the end of the Passcrcs, all the other groups having the i'eet scaled only 

 in front. 



The Larks are walking birds, building and in man}' species roosting on 

 the ground : with the exception of the more arboreal forms, the}- rarely perch 

 on trees ; and when they do, they select the thicker branches. They do not 

 wash, but dust themselves after the manner of Sparrows or Gallinaceous birds. 

 Their food consists of spiders, centipedes, insects, larvae, and seeds or grain. 



Larks are powerful flyers, their wings being large and pointed ; the wings 

 of the males are also as a rule stronger and more elongated than those of the 

 females, doubtless to enable them to maintain their soaring hovering flight when 

 singing: as a natural result of this increase of wing-power the sternum is some- 

 what more prominent, giving greater fulness to the chest. By these characters 

 the bird-catchers are enabled to tell the sex of Larks directly they grasp them, 

 the male being, in their own words, "a handful." 



Colonel Charles Bingham tells me that the sex of a Lark can always be told 

 by the length of the hind claw, which is distinctly longer in the males than in 

 the females. 



