Reproduction 71 
she will gradually lose her instinct of concealment by abandon- 
ment, show solicitude by her presence, by running here and 
there and in ground-picking, and finally go onto her nest with 
an observer comparatively close at hand. It should be added 
that, in a few eases, the female Lark may sit close and the nest 
then is found only by an accidental flushing of the incubating 
bird. Again as Harris (in Bendire, 1895) brought out, she sits 
closer toward evening and, as I have noted, when the day is 
very chilly. Sutton (1927) also, after a lengthy recital of the 
actions of a pair of Larks whose nest he was endeavoring to 
find and for which he describes many of the reactions tabulated 
above for nest-building and egg-laying birds (though these sig- 
nificances he did not realize), finally found his nest near dark 
by flushing a close-sitting female. 
The remarkable luck of the writer in finding seven nests in 
one day (April 18, 1926) was because of some unusual circum- 
Stances. First, there were many Larks on the Main Subdivision 
at Evanston; secondly, all began incubation almost simultane- 
ously (because conditions for renesting in April had suddenly 
become propitious, see Figure 6); thirdly, the most desirable 
nesting site was that of the grass strip between the sidewalk 
and the dirt mounds in the center of the street (see Plate XII, 
Fig. 1; Plate XIII, Fig. 2). 
All that was necessary to find the nests here was to tramp 
these strips over and over until the nest of every bird that 
flushed was located. Since the day was cold and I attempted 
to approach against the concealing clump of verdure on the 
north side of the nest, many incubating birds did not flush 
until I was nearly upon them. To find their nests then, was 
simple. 
Nests containing young shortly after hatching may be found 
by watching the female leave, as she does when incubating. 
Later the parent birds will give away the nests while carrying 
food. But, unless the position of the nest is spotted within a 
few feet, many minutes, sometimes hours, will be required even 
then to find it, so protectively colored are the young whether 
in down or juvenile plumage (Plate XX XIII, Figs. 1 and 2). 
Nest Building.—The nest cavity seems to. be dug by the 
female in all cases as no evidence of using a ‘‘natural depres- 
sion’’ was ever noted in spite of many literature references to 
