THE MEADOW-LARK. 348 



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 us 

 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 tlie 

 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 



Siurnella, 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 timps 

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

 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 

 oectoral crescent. 



STUENELLA M AGS A. — Swainsm. 



The Meadow-lark; Old Field-lark. 



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

 magna, Catesb}-, tab. .33). Wils. Am. Orn., III. (1811) 20. 

 Siurnella magna, Swainson. Phil. Mag., I. (1827) 4.36. 

 Sturnus Ludovicianus, Audubon. Orn. Biog., II. (1834) 216; V. (1S39) 491i. 

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



