BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 259 



retreat for the rest cannot be exceedingly remote, for, if the 

 furrows in the plowed fields become exposed by the direct- 

 ness of the winter's sun, it will not be long before the cheery 

 notes of the males are heard here. The eggs, four to five in 

 number, are grayish and sprinkled with pale blue or brownish 

 spots. I think the young abandon the nest before quite able 

 to fly. and are left to shift for themselves when about three 

 weeks out of their nests. Little time is lost by the parents 

 in getting another brood under way, that the last may be suffi- 

 ciently matured for the winter's exigencies. 



I never heard the European skylark sing with my own ears, 

 but have listened to descriptions of the song in prose and in 

 poetry, until I almost believed I had heard it, but I must hear 

 the veritable singer himself to be convinced that in anything 

 except perhaps volume he can a whit excel our own American 

 skylark. 



My first enchantment occurred within the corporate limits of 

 this city — Minneapolis — when those limits were quite restricted 

 compared with them now, in June. 1868. I was riding along 

 with my field glass in my hand, as has been my uniform custom 

 in the bird season for thirty years or more, when a male flitted 

 up from the ground about ten to fifteen feet into the air and 

 about thirty yards directly in front of me, simultaneously burst- 

 ing forth into song. While pouring forth such a volume that 

 it seemed as if he would have instantly burst if he should close 

 his extended mouth, he turned abruptly to the right and half 

 sailing away about fifty yards, again wheeled with a rapid flut- 

 ter of his wings that lifted him some thirty feet more, he gyrated 

 back at least a hundred yards, and thus flitting, sailing, singing, 

 he zigzagged right and left, mounting constantly higher and 

 higher, never pausing a moment for breath until he entirely 

 disappeared from unaided vision in as clear a sky as ever can- 

 opied the green fields in June. Still, the music, fainter and 

 fainter, but if possible sweeter and sweeter, was distinctly 

 audible, and my breath had been unconsciously suspended 

 while all consciousness was in the tips of my ears and points 

 of my eyes, now peering through the glass, when, after several 

 minutes of unmeasured time, his song suddenly ceased and he 

 closed his wings as a diver lays down his arms to his sides, and 

 head straight downward, descended with the velocity of a spent 

 bullet, until within a single yard of the ground, and no more 

 than that distance from the identical spot he had left, he 

 opened those wings and touched the grass as lightly as a 

 snowflake annanoyed by the winds. 



