SKY-LARK. 177 



fields, are composed for the most part of migratory 

 arrivals j"^ which, after a brief sojourn, continue their 

 journey southward. Our home-bred birds also perform, 

 during the winter months, a kind of partial migration, 

 shifting their ground repeatedly, according to the state 

 of the weather. Not unfrequently after severe frosts, 

 when scarcely a sky-lark has been visible for weeks, 

 we find on the first bright sunny day the stubbles 

 are fiHed with them, but these soon leave again with 

 the least indication of returning cold, and thus they 

 come and go, till spring has fairly commenced, and all 

 our northern visitants have again passed over us to their 

 distant homes. Yarrell, referring to the migration 

 of this species, mentions having received a communica- 

 tion from the Rev. R. Lubbock, of his having witnessed 

 from Caister Point, near Yarmouth, " the arrival of 

 sky-larks from the sea;" and the same has been noticed 

 on several occasions during the month of October, by 

 the Eev. E. W. Dowell, at Blakeney. They arrive, he 

 says, " all day long in small flocks, and I have observed 



* The late Mr. St. John, in his notes " On Natural History 

 and Sport in Moray," thus notices the mie^i-ation of the Sky- 

 lark (p. 311) : — " During the first days of snow and storm a 

 constant immigration of larks takes place ; these birds continuing 

 to arrive from seaward during the whole day, and frequently 

 they may be heard flying in after it is dark. They come flit- 

 ting over in a constant straggling stream, not in compact flocks, 

 and pitching on the first piece of ground which they find un- 

 covered with snow, immediately begin searching for food, feeding 

 indiscriminately on insects, small seeds, and even on turnip leaves, 

 when nothing else can be found." The same author also remarks (p. 

 45), " The skylark, as Milton knew, is the bird which sings earliest 

 in the morning. Before the sun is up, I often hear the lark sing- 

 ing over my head before there is hght enough to distinguish it. 

 Late in the summer evenings, too, after all is still, and apparently 

 the birds have aU retired to their roosting places, I have observed 

 how suddenly every lark rises and sings for a short time as if their 

 evening hymn, and as suddenly and simultaneously all cease." 

 2 A 



