318 USEFUL BIRDS. 



a perch, or while the bird is on the wing. Rarely a talented 

 individual soars aloft, uttering an ecstatic flight song, which 

 compares favorably with that of the most celebrated song- 

 sters. I have heard this in full volume but once, and then 

 found it difficult to believe that it came from the throat of a 

 common Meadowlark. It was not at all suggestive of that 

 bird's ordinary song, except in some of the last notes, nor 

 did it in the least resemble that of the Western Meadow- 

 lark ; it more resembled the music of the Bobolink, but was 

 louder and not so hurriedly given. 



The Meadowlark is now quite generally protected by law 

 at all times, and no bird more fully deserves such protection. 

 It is practically harmless, and takes nothing that is of any 

 use to man except a few small grains and seeds. On the 

 other hand, it is one of the most useful. birds of the fields, 

 perhaps the most valuable. In summer almost ninety-nine 

 per cent, of its food consists of insects and allied forms. It 

 eats about all the principal pests of the fields, and is particu- 

 larly destructive to cutworms, hairy ground caterpillars, and 

 grasshoppers. In summer it gets but few seeds, but in fall 

 and winter it takes many weed seeds. It visits weedy corn- 

 fields and gardens in search of ragweed and other seeds, of 

 which it devours enormous quantities, which make up about 

 one-third of the food for the year. Even in winter it pre- 

 fers insects when it can get them. Mr. C. W. Nash says, 

 in his "Birds of Ontario," that several specimens shot in 

 winter contained only insects, taken about market gardens. 

 Professor Beal says that even in December and January the 

 insect components of the food are thirty-nine and twenty- 

 four per cent., respectively ; and in March, when insects are 

 still hard to obtain, the quantity rises to seventy-three per 

 cent. Professor Beal makes an ingenious and very moderate 

 estimate, from which he concludes that twenty-five dollars' 

 worth of hay is saved annually in an ordinary township 

 by Meadowlarks, through their destruction of grasshoppers, 

 and he values hay at only ten dollars per ton. When we 

 consider that grasshoppers, green grasshoppers, locusts, and 

 crickets all together form twenty-nine per cent, of the food 

 of this bird for the year, and that it is almost entirely in- 



