178 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



that these birds, and indeed most of the small land-birds, 

 reach our shores in greater numbers towards the after- 

 noon. Larks frequently burst into song when they make 

 the land." On the Suffolk coast they have been also seen 

 to arrive in the same manner, and their return in 

 February, in "innumerable flocks," is remarked by Messrs. 

 Sheppard and Whitear. It would seem moreover that these 

 flocks are not merely confined to the day time, from the 

 fact of specimens being frequently picked up dead, 

 having flown against the windows of the lighthouses on 

 the coast. Large quantities of sky-larks are netted by 

 our bird-catchers during the autumn and winter, for the 

 London markets,"^ the best of the males being reserved 

 as cage birds, and so expert are some of the old hands, 

 that I have more than once heard it asserted that they 

 will tell in the dark the males from the females, as 

 they take the birds from the net, and that, merely by 

 handhng them, the former being somewhat the widest 

 across the shoulders. The females are instantly killed 

 for the market, and the males reserved for their vocal 

 powers. So difficult, however, is it to detect, even 

 by sight, any external difference between the sexes, 

 that the above seems at first to be scarcely worthy of 

 credit, but though I cannot actually vouch for it as a 

 fact, I have so often been struck with the practical 

 knowledge of these men, in similar cases, as contrasted 

 with the limited information conveyed in natural history 

 works, that I feel inchned after all to believe that there 

 is really some truth in the story. White, buff, and pied 

 varieties are not uncommon. Of the former, a pure 

 albino, with pink eyes, and the bill and legs straw 



* Dr. Wynter, in his " Curiosities of Civilization," writing 

 on the " London Commissariat," gives 400,000 Larks as only an 

 approximate idea of the numbers sent for sale annually into the 

 London markets alone. 



