400 GEOLOGICAJ. SURVEY OF CANADA. 



duction is protracted through July. I have observed young birds 

 on the wing in June, and found fresh eggs in the nest during the 

 latter half of July. In fact, all through the summer months the 

 troops of larks everywhere to be seen consist of old birds mixed 

 with the young in all stages of growth. The great flocks, however > 

 are not usually made up until the end of the summer, when all 

 the young are full grown, and the parents having concluded the 

 business of rearing their young, have changed their plumage. The 

 young of the first brood soon lose the peculiar speckled plumage 

 with which they are at first covered; the later ones change about 

 the time the feathers of the old birds are being renewed. The 

 agreeable warbUng song is scarcely to be heard after June. The 

 nest of the horned lark may be stumbled upon anywhere on the 

 open prairie. It is a slight affair, — merely a shallow depression 

 in the ground, lined with a few dried grass stems. The eggs are 

 four or five in number, measuring nearly an inch in length by about 

 three-fifths in breadth; they are very variable in contour. The 

 colour is well adapted to concealment in the gray-brown nesti 

 being nearly the colour of the withered materials upon which they 

 rest, thickly and uniformly dotted with light brown. The eggs 

 and young birds, hke those of other small species nesting on the 

 ground in this region, often become the prey of the foxes, badgers 

 and weasels, if not also of the gophers. {Coues.) Numbers of 

 nests were obtained and examined in a wagon trip of 500 miles in 

 1895 and all were of the same character. The nest was always a 

 small hole in the ground lined with dried grass and contained from 

 two to four eggs. The latter seemed to be the usual number. 

 (Macoun.) 



474(7. Streaked Horned Lark. 



Otocoris alpestris strigata Hensh. i 884. 



British Columbia(?) (Dwight.) West of Coast range; at Port 

 Simpson, by W. B. Anderson; also at Burrard inlet. (Fannin.) 

 Spring and autumn migrant through the valley of the lower Fraser ; 

 breeds on mountain tops above timber line. (Brooks.) Not credited 

 to British Columbia by Oberholser. 



