30 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louts 
Horned Lark as the dominant form of plowed ground bird and 
show, as well, that more were found in such conditions (162 in- 
dividuals of a total of 710) thanin any other. The next most fa- 
vored habitats they list are pastures, then wheat, rye and barley 
fields, then meadows, then corn (of early summer undoubtedly 
with much bare ground between rows), then stubble, then oats, 
with but a single record from waste and fallow ground (very 
probably because it is weed grown at this season). As might be 
expected not a Lark was recorded from woods, orchards, shrub- 
bery or swamps. The young Larks especially show their inher- 
ited taste for the bare, verdure-wanting localities and in these 
they will be found in June and July while their parents, forced 
by the exigencies of second and third broods and the inability to 
move nests from the flora that grows rapidly about them, are 
forced to spend much time in conditions they would not naturally 
favor. The young at that time are a more proper index of the 
optimum habitat of the Prairie Horned Lark. Loomis (1891) is 
one of the few who describes the conditions in which wintering 
flocks are found in the south. These, in South Carolina, are barren 
upland pastures where grass has been cropped to the roots, 
wind-swept grain fields, cotton fields where stalks are small and 
the ground free from grass. As birds of the barrens one would 
not expect Larks to alight in trees freely, nor on wires. Indeed 
Sutton (1927) says ‘‘I have never seen one alight on any leafy 
bough, bush or wire’’. Such is generally true, but Mouseley 
(1916) remarks the Larks of a breeding pair alighting in a tree 
before approaching the nest, and the writer has seen the singing 
males at both Evanston and Ithaca frequently on posts, stakes 
and building tops and the ‘‘B’’ male now and then alighted, 
insecurely, on a smooth wire stretched above the garden at 
Ithaca. Eifrig (1902) reports Prairie Horned Larks coming 
into the city streets in Maryland and there eating with the House 
Sparrows when snow covered their normal food supply. Those 
incongruous homes, the icy, boreal-blasted fields to which the 
Prairie Horned Lark returns in January and on which he begins 
his songs, though the temperature may be zero, are a part of the 
breeding season and under that they will be considered. 
_ Associates in fall and winter—The Prairie Horned Lark is 
essentially alone in his choice of habitats in the breeding season, 
none other approaches the desolate ecological niche in which he 
