64 NEWS FROM THE BIRDS. 



sometimes called tlie Missouri skylark or tit- 

 lark ; but it seems tliat the name titlark, once 

 apj)lied to several sjDecies of birds, is now aban- 

 doned, and " pipit " is being used. The bird 

 of which I speak dwells on the prairies and 

 plains of our Middle States, breeding from 

 Central Dakota and Minnesota northward. 

 There are those who contend that its song is 

 not inferior to that of the far-famed European 

 skylark. 



A writer in Minnesota skives a thrillins; ac- 

 count of an occasion on which he heard the 

 aerial song and witnessed the upward flight of 

 this bird. He was riding along a country road 

 with a friend, when he saw a bird spring from 

 the grass within a few feet of his horse. It 

 flew a hundred feet away with a succession of 

 flits of the wings which lifted it perhaps 

 twenty feet into the air, then it turned and 

 flew back toward him in the same w^ay, again 

 mounting up about the same distance as before. 

 At that point it began to sing with great power, 

 and thus it climbed upward, upward, swinging 

 back and forth, until it finally vanished wholly 

 from sight in the blue ether ; then the observ- 

 er used his field glass, a pow^erful one, and 

 watched the upward vaulting of the blithe min- 

 strel, which kept up its singing all the while. 



