CATALOGUE OF CANADIAN BIRDS. 399 
month. (A. L. Garneau.) This bird nests on Toronto island and 
on Toronto sand-bar at Ashbridge bay, seldom having eggs, before 
the middle of May, as the instances when shore larks nests have 
been found here at the end of March and first week of April, while 
snow was on the ground, have proved to be the eggs of alpestris and 
not praticola. This variety of horned lark breeds commonly in 
Manitoba. In northwestern Saskatchewan and Alberta it is replaced 
by the pallid horned lark. (W. Raine.) At Ottawa this bird builds 
in a shallow hole in the ground. The nest is composed of grass and 
lined with fine grass, horse hair and feathers. Eggs four or five. 
Greyish white, marked with spots of brownish purple. (G. R- 
White.) 
Further accounts of the breeding habits of this bird will be found 
in The Ottawa Naturalist,.Vol. XIV, p. 23, XVI, p. 226 and XX) 
p. 40. 
474c. Desert Horned Lark. 
Otocorts alpestris leucolema (COUES.) 
In summer from latitude 49° north on the eastern side of the 
Rocky mountains into Alberta. Non-breeding birds have been 
examined from Calgary, Alberta, and from Medicine Hat, Sas- 
katchewan. (Oberholser.) 
In the writer’s trip across the prairie this form was found every- 
where on the prairie south of lat. 50° from the rooth meridian to 
the 114th at the base of the Rocky mountains. Our northern 
specimens are three from Indian Head, Sask., taken between April 
7th and r2th, 1892; four others from Medicine Hat, taken between 
April 6th and May 2nd, 1894. On the prairie south of the line of 
the Canadian Pacific Railway this species with McCown’s bunting 
and the chestnut-collared bunting were extremely common and 
constantly flocked together. (Wacoun.) 
BREEDING NoTEes.—The horned lark is one of the species which, 
in this latitude, usually rears at least two broods each season—a 
fact which in part accounts for the preponderance of individuals 
over those of the species with which they are associated. I have 
already adverted to the extremely early nesting-time which has 
been ascertained and have only to add that the period of repro- 
