22 



THE 00 L O G I S T 



Hutchin's Goose on Home Place. July 14, 1919. 



— Photo by Virginia Lane. 



date October 12, 1919. I think that 

 there has been a slow increase in num- 

 bers in the state since tliat time. In 

 this locality the increase has been 

 slow, indeed, since five is the largest 

 number I have ever noted in the fall, 

 of a family of old and young, more 

 often only three The Meadow Lark 

 once identified is easily discovered 

 even at a distance; its size, mode of 

 flying, alternate flappings of wings 

 and sailings, and the two white outer 

 tail feathers all serve to establish its 

 identity. Though a pair of Meadow 

 Larks have nested in my fields each 

 year for several years, I have never 

 found their nest with the eggs, I have 

 found the nest without the eggs twice, 

 and three times have found the eggs 

 without the nest. Three different 

 years I have found the eggs of the 



Meadow Lark while harvesting my 

 hay crop, and each time in the month 

 of July. Supposedly each time I have 

 disturbed the female in my work, and 

 broken up the nest, since having once 

 raked up an egg in the new made hay, 

 once the egg was layed on the top of 

 a hay cock, and this year July 11, 

 1919, finding one fresh egg on the 

 ground at the foot of a hay cock. 

 July 22, 1904 is the latest date of find- 

 ing their eggs I have. Knight in his 

 "Birds of Maine" sets of nesting date 

 as "early in June," but my experience 

 points to a much later date, and I 

 would set the time for finding fresh 

 eggs from the middle of June to the 

 last of July. 



Both Chester A. Reed in N. A. 

 Birds' Eggs, and Oliver Davis, in Nest 

 and Eggs of North American Birds, 



