400 GEOLOGICA]. SURVEY OF CANADA. 
duction is protracted through July. I have observed young birds 
on the wing in June, and found fresh eggs in the nest during the 
latter half of July. In fact, all through the summer months the 
troops of larks everywhere to be seen consist of old birds mixed 
with the young in all stages of growth. The great flocks, however, 
are not usually made up until the end of the summer, when all 
the young are full grown, and the parents having concluded the 
business of rearing their young, have changed their plumage. The 
young of the first brood soon lose the peculiar speckled plumage 
with which they are at first covered; the later ones change about 
the time the feathers of the old birds are being renewed. The 
agreeable warbling song is scarcely to be heard after June. The 
nest of the horned lark may be stumbled upon anywhere on the 
open prairie. It is a slight affair.—merely a shallow depression 
in the ground, lined with a few dried grass stems. The eggs are 
four or five in number, measuring nearly an inch in length by about 
three-fifths in breadth; they are very variable in contour. The 
colour is well adapted to concealment in the gray-brown nest; 
being nearly the colour of the withered materials upon which they 
rest, thickly and uniformly dotted with light brown. The eggs 
and young birds, like those of other small species nesting on the 
ground in this region, often become the prey of the foxes, badgers 
and weasels, if not also of the gophers. (Couwes.) Numbers of 
nests were obtained and examined in a wagon trip of 500 miles in 
1895 and all were of the same character. The nest was always a 
small hole in the ground lined with dried grass and contained from 
two to four eggs. The latter seemed to be the usual number. 
(Macoun.) 
474g. Streaked Horned Lark. 
Otocorts alpestris strigata HENSH. 1884. 
British Columbia(?) (Dwzight.) West of Coast range; at Port 
Simpson, by W. B. Anderson; also at Burrard inlet. (/annin.) 
Spring and autumn migrant through the valley of the lower Fraser ; 
breeds on mountain tops above timber line. (Brooks.) Not credited 
to British Columbia by Oberholser. 
