THE MEADOW-LARK. 343 



and complaint ; and, as the alarm passes along the country, 

 sometimes as many as a dozen or twenty birds are hovering 

 over him, scolding vociferously. 



Two broods are usually reared in. the season : as soon as 

 the last brood leaves the nest, the whole family joins with 

 its neighbors into a flock of sometimes a hundred or hun- 

 dred and fifty or more. They then visit the grain-fields, and 

 inflict considerable damage by eating and destroying the 

 grain. In many localities, they are so numerous at this 

 season, that they are a serious nuisance ; and the farmers 

 destroy great numbers of them with poison and with the 

 gun. 



Localities in the neighborhood of the seaboard are thus 

 afflicted more than others ; and I have seen flocks of these 

 birds in Plymouth County, Mass., containing as many as a 

 thousand individuals. 



About the last of October, they depart on their southern 

 migration. 



STURNELLA, VIEILLOT 



Sturnella, VIEILLOT, Analyse (1816). (Type Alauda magna, L.) 

 Body thick, stout; legs large, toes reaching beyond the tail; tail short, even, 

 with narrow acuminate feathers ; bill slender, elongated ; length about three times 

 the height; commissure straight from the basal angle; culmen flattened basally, 

 extending backwards, and parting the frontal feathers; longer than the head, but 

 shorter than tarsus; nostrils linear, covered by an incumbent membranous scale; 

 inner lateral toe longer than the outer, but not reaching to basal joint of middle; 

 hind toe a little shorter than the middle, which is equal to the tarsus ; hind claw 

 nearly twice as long as the middle; feathers of head stiffened and bristly; the 

 shafts of those above extended into a black seta; tertiaries nearly equal to the 

 primaries; feathers above all transversely banded; beneath yellow, with a black 

 pectoral crescent. 



STURNELLA MAGNA. Swainson. 

 The Meadow-lark; Old Field-lark. 



Alauda magna, Linnaeus, Syst. Nat., I. (1758) 167, 10th ed. (based on Alauda 

 wagna, Catesby, tab. 33). Wils. Am. Orn., III. (1811) 20. 

 Slurnetta magna, Swainson. Phil. Mag., I. (1827) 436. 

 Sturnus Ludoiicianus, Audubon. Orn. Biog., II. (1834) 216; V. (1839) 492. 

 Sturnella Ludoviciana, Nuttall. Man., I. (1832) 147. 



