40 Birds I Have Kept. 



poppy seed, canary and millet, and a little crushed hemp, 

 suet finely chopped, yolk of egg and ants' eggs and mealworms: 

 some people add "German paste", an abomination, the basis 

 of which is pea-meal. A few oats, soaked in rain water until 

 they begin to sprout, are a favourite addition to the Lark's 

 bill of fare, which should include an abundant supply of green 

 food, and a few insects, mealworms, gentles, or blaokbeetles 

 every day. A Lark thus fed will sing nearly all the year 

 round, unless perhaps when moulting. 



These birds have, usually, two broods during the season, 

 sometimes three, laying each time from three to five eggs of 

 a whitish grey, spotted with a darker shade of the same colour. 

 They incubate for fourteen days, and the young often leave 

 the nest before they can fly. The nest is generally placed 

 on the ground, in a little natural hollow, and is iuartistically 

 made of grass, lined with wool and hair. 



When it is desired to bring up young Larks by hand, they 

 must be taken from the nest before they can see, when they 

 are easily reared on bread-crumbs, or buckwheat flour, poppy 

 seed, ants' eggs, and a little lean meat minced very fine. The 

 males can be readily distinguished from the females, even in 

 the nest, by their yellowish colour and the few marks upon 

 their breasts. 



There are instances on record of these birds having bred in 

 a large garden aviary, and some females are of so benevolent 

 a disposition that they readily adopt and bring up the young 

 of other birds that are placed with them, as if they were 

 their own. And "this instinct", says Buffon, "appears very 

 early, even before that which disposes them to become mothers. 

 In the month of May a young Lark was brought to me which 

 could not feed itself; I fed it, and it could hardly peck up, 

 when a brood of four young ones of the same species was 

 brought to me from another place. She exhibited a singular 

 affection for these new comers, which were not much younger 

 than herself; she nursed them night and day, warmed them 



