BIRDS OF NEW YORK 



205 



until finally exhausted he drops like a dart to the field to rejoin his mate. 

 This flight song is almost sure to be heard several times a day over the 

 field in which the nest is concealed. The Prairie horned lark walks and 

 runs instead of hopping like our common sparrows, and his ample square- 

 tail, which is black when extended in flight, as well as his long pointed 

 wings and easy gliding flight, distinguish him readily from any of our other 

 field birds. It is evident that two broods are often reared in this latitude, for 

 after the first brood are well fledged, it is a common thing to find nests 

 containing fresh eggs as late as the middle of May or early in June. After 

 the young are reared, they are found about plowed fields and waste lands, 

 in little troops consisting 

 usually of a pair of old birds 

 and their young. Frequently 

 the troop consists of 5 or 6 

 birds; at other times of 10 

 or 12, which leads me to 

 believe that the old and their 

 young keep together during 

 the greater part of the season. 



Late in the fall they gather 

 into larger bands and in the 

 springtime after the migra- 

 tions are well advanced, it is 

 not unusual to see flocks of 15 and 20 Prairie horned larks feeding together 

 on the open fields in any part of central or western New York. The nest is 

 concealed in the pasture or meadow beside a clod of earth, a cobblestone, 

 or a tuft of grass, and consists simply of a few grasses lining the hole which 

 the mother bird has scooped out in the earth, or in a depression caused 

 by the foot of a cow or some other domestic animal, which she has rounded 

 and lined with grasses. The eggs are almost invariably 4 in number, 

 grayish white in ground color, very thickly spotted with light brown, 

 resembling closely the eggs of the English sparrow but more thickly and 



Photo by George C. Embody 

 Prairie horned lark's nest and eggs 



