NEW GLEANINGS IN OLD FIELDS 



m 



I am glad to see that this growing interest in bird 

 life has reached our schools and is being promoted 

 there. I often receive letters from teachers touching 

 these matters. A teacher in the State of Delaware 

 wrote me that he and his pupils were trying to know 

 all the birds within a mile of their schoolhouse. 

 One species of bird had puzzled them much. The 

 teacher frequently saw the birds feeding in the road 

 in the evening as he walked home from school. Then, 

 when the blizzard came, they approached the school- 

 house for crumbs, sometimes in loose flocks of a 

 dozen or more. 



This is the teacher's description of the bird : — 



" The upper half of its bill is dark, and about one 

 third on the tips of the lower. The rest is light. The 

 feathers are a greenish yellow below the bill, and the 

 throat feathers are black with white tips. The belly 

 is white, but the feathers are black underneath. In 

 size it is a Uttle smaller than the robin. It has a chirp, 

 when flying, something Uke the cedar-bird. The 

 back toe is certainly very long for so small a bird." 



Had not this description been accompanied by a 

 wing, leg, and tail of the bird in question, I should 

 have been at a loss to name it. One of the birds was 

 found dead in the snow beneath the telegraph wires, 

 and this afforded the samples. It proved to be the 

 prairie homed lark, one of our migrants, which passes 

 165 



