The Desert Horned Lark 



By P. B. Peabody 



UNIVERSALLY habitant, universally beloved: that is the status of the 

 Horned Lark this country over. To the critical student this genus 

 affords unending opportunities for study and conjecture. Characters are 

 fluid; and affinities tantalizingly mutual, intimate and confusing. A single 

 conspicuous example may here be writ-down; as having intimate concern 

 with the resident Horned Larks of the region exploited in this paper: 



Shifting, ever, with the changes of the seasons, and variant in abund- 

 ance even in areas of apparent uniformity, the Desert Horned Lark may be 

 found, summer and winter, throughout the strictly prairie stretches of parts 

 of Northeastern Wyoming. Migrational movements are seldom discernible; 

 one being more than likely to confuse the autumnal and wintral flockings 

 of resident birds with the casual or even apparently accidental occurrence 

 of examples of the races breeding quite further to the North. 



The writer has sought, for three years, to secure testimony as to the 

 mere occurrence of Horned Larks other than resident. Finding flocks of 

 Horned Larks, here and there along his day-long missionary journeys,through- 

 out the fall and winter, he was never able, until April of 1905, to bring in- 

 to scientific ken examples of northern Horned Larks. But on the above 

 date, taking cue from the unusual abundance of Horned Larks, for several 

 days, in both Crook and Weston Counties, he braved a spiteful belated 

 storm of snow to scour the sage-and-prickly-pear-besprinkled plains near 

 Newcastle. In a flock of a dozen Horned Larks were some that seemed to 

 be things apart. A pair were caught examining the same sage root. Taken 

 at one shot, they proved, with two fine males taken in Crook County on 

 January 3rd, to be typical of Mr. Oberholser's " enthymia "; which stands 

 (in Mr. O's judgment) for an otherwise non-descript race, " proving to be 

 smaller and more highly colored — (with) throat usually yellow," — as com- 

 pared with the leucoUzma, — (now, arcticola,) — of Coues. (See, Bailey, "Hand- 

 book of the Birds of the Western United States"). 



In essentials, this Horned Lark appears to differ, quite, from its fellow 

 of the Mid-Western States. We do not find it frequenting the ranches, at 

 any time. — though it may, and in some places doubtless does, occur thus. 



