THE PRAIRIE HEN 231 



air, were Turkey Vultures (we saw two), Ferruginous 

 Rough-legs, Swainson's and Sharp- shinned Hawks, Fish 

 Hawk (one), Barn, Tree, and Bank Swallows. 



The list shows that interesting mingling of western and 

 eastern forms which one would expect to find at a locality 

 almost on the one hundredth meridian. The Western 

 Meadowlark was the most abundant as well as the most 

 musical bird present. Its song season was now at its height, 

 and there were few moments from daylight to dusk when 

 one or more birds could not be heard. The flight song was 

 uttered almost as frequently as the perch song. It was al 

 ways preceded by a mellow, whistled wheu, repeated four or 

 five times at increasingly shorter intervals, until it seemed 

 to force the bird into the air to give freer utterance to a 

 hurried, ecstatic, twittering, jumbled warble, as it mounted 

 on fluttering wings to a height of twenty to forty feet, de- 

 scribed an arc and sought a new perch. 



On the morning of May 5, I saw and heard a single 

 Eastern Meadowlark, whose clean-cut fifing was instantly 

 recognizable in the chorus of bubbling flute-notes of the 

 western bird. The difference in the calls of the species was 

 even more marked than that which exists between their 

 songs. The call-note of the Western Meadowlark is a chuck, 

 chuck followed by a wooden, rolling b-r-r-r-r-r, wholly unlike 

 the sharp dzit or yert and metallic twitter of the eastern 

 bird. 



Beyond question these two birds meet at the junction of 

 plain and prairie as species, not as geographic races, and 

 the rare intermediates from this part of their common 

 range are, in my opinion, hybrids rather than climatic inter- 

 grades. 



The morning after our arrival at Halsey, Professor 

 Bruner made good his promise to introduce me to the 

 Prairie Hen and I listened for the first time to their 

 booming, with doubtless much the same feeling that an 

 ardent music-lover first hears the voice of a world-renowned 



