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BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 259 
retreat for the rest cannot be exceedingly remote, for, if the 
furrows in the plowed fields become exposed by the direct- 
ness of the winter’s sun, it will not be long before the cheery 
notes of the males are heard here. The eggs, four to five in 
number, are grayish and sprinkled with pale blue or brownish 
spots. I think the young abandon the nest before quite able 
to fly, and are left to shift for themselves when about three 
weeks out of their nests. Little time is lost by the parents 
in getting another brood under way, that the last may be suffi- 
ciently matured for the winter’s exigencies. 
I never heard the European skylark sing with my own ears, 
but have listened to descriptions of the song in prose and in 
poetry, until I almost believed I had heard it, but I must hear 
the veritable singer himself to be convinced that in anything 
except perhaps volume he can a whit excel our own American 
skylark. 
My first enchantment occurred within the corporate limits of 
this city—Minneapolis—when those limits were quite restricted 
compared with them now, in June, 1868. I was riding along 
with my field glass in my hand, as has been my uniform custom 
in the bird season for thirty years or more, when a male flitted 
up from the ground about ten to fifteen feet into the air and 
about thirty yards directly in front of me, simultaneously burst- 
ing forth into song. While pouring forth such a volume that 
it seemed as if he would have instantly burst if he should close 
his extended mouth, he turned abruptly to the right and half 
sailing away about fifty yards, again wheeled with a rapid flut- 
ter of his wings that lifted him some thirty feet more, he gyrated 
back at least a hundred yards, and thus flitting, sailing, singing, 
he zigzagged right and left, mounting constantly higher and 
higher, never pausing a moment for breath until he entirely 
disappeared from unaided vision in as clear a sky as ever can- 
opied the green fields in June. Still, the music, fainter and 
fainter, but if possible sweeter and sweeter, was distinctly 
audible, and my breath had been unconsciously suspended 
while all consciousness was in the tips of my ears and points 
of my eyes, now peering through the glass, when, after several 
minutes of unmeasured time, his song suddenly ceased and he 
closed his wings as a diver lays down his arms to his sides, and 
head straight downward, descended with the velocity of a spent 
bullet, until within a single yard of the ground, and no more 
than that distance from the identical spot he had left, he 
opened those wings and touched the grass as lightly as a 
snowflake unnanoyed by the winds. 
