The Bird Book 



grass, clover or standing corn, is always well 

 concealed, and, as the bird sometimes lays very 

 late and sits closely, it is not uncommon for 

 individual birds to be decapitated by the mowing 

 machine. From seven to ten eggs are laid, light 

 buff speckled and blotched with reddish brown 

 and ash grey. 



It is seldom that any nest placed on the ground 

 is easy to find, and most people imagine that the 

 Skylark has reached the acme of perfection in 

 the art of concealment. Certainly the nest is 

 a difficult one to discover, but a systematic 

 search is usually successful. One of the best 

 methods is to get a friend to help you to drag a 

 rope over a rough pasture field and carefully 

 mark the spot from which the sitting bird 

 rises. A rather more lengthy proceeding is to 

 watch the birds through a telescope. The nest, 

 usually approached by a " run," which sometimes 

 leads to its detection, is built of grasses with a 

 scanty lining of rootlets and horse-hair. The four 

 or five eggs are of a dirty white ground colour, 

 often entirely clouded over by spots of olive 

 brown and underlying markings of greyish brown. 

 The Skylark itself is too general a favourite to 

 need description. Everyone must have listened 

 again and again to its song in the springtime and 

 watched the singer soar on quivering wings till it 

 became a mere speck against the blue sky. Yet 

 all the while its notes can be heard with perfect 



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