AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 277 



However, with this one exception, I have never known the two 

 species to borrow one another's music sheet. 



In Oklahoma I made some effort to find out whether the two forms 

 mingle together in the family relation. A dip in the prairie through 

 which a small stream flowed was the haunt of a brilliant lyrist of the 

 western variety. On my first ramble, both going and returning, I 

 found him there piping his marvelous tunes. Afterwards I visited the 

 spot four times, and on every occasion this bird announced his presence 

 by singing his bright lays, proving — so it seemed to me — that he was 

 the same individual and that this place was his special precinct. Other 

 larks of the eastern kind were tenants of the same large field, but they 

 seemed to avoid this particular locality, as if they recognized the fact 

 that their cousin had established a prior claim. 



Nor was this the only experiment of the kind I tried, and in every 

 case conclusive proof was furnished that in the breeding season the 

 two species keep well to their haunts, and do not often poach upon 

 each other's presence. 



That eminent authority on birds, Robert Ridgway, says that the 

 western lark is "without much doubt a distinct species." He also 

 speaks of the "excessive rarity of intermediate specimens" — that is, 

 the peculiar forms which some bird students have thought were the 

 offspring of the crossing of the two species. 



It is interesting to note the ranges of these birds. On our western 

 prairies both the eastern and western types dwell together in apparent 

 harmony. As you go eastward, you will find the western form dwind- 

 ling in numbers and becoming very rare in Illinois and Wisconsin, the 

 eastern limits of their range. The precise reverse of this is true as 

 you journey westward from the prairies to the arid plains. I have 

 never seen or heard the eastern lark on the plains or among the foot- 

 hills or in the mountain parks of Colorado, but in all these localities 

 the westerners were found in great abundance. 



Far out on the arid plains, in regions where rain seldom falls and 

 where living streams are unknown, many of the lyrical western larks 

 find breeding and feeding grounds. One cannot help wondering how 

 they solve the problem of drinking and bathing, but they must solve it 

 in some way. 



However, the western larks are also found in goodly numbers on the 

 irrigated portions of the plains and in the meadows that border the 

 streams. Some of them make their summer homes on the parched 

 mesas and among the rolling foothills. Do they also ascend into the 

 mountains? Yes, in broad, open valleys, like the one in which Buena 

 Vista is located, they rear their happy families and sing their loud 



