YELLOW OR ORANGE CONSPICUOUS 513 



incubation. This lasts thirteen days, and the young re- 

 main in the nursery twelve days longer, leaving it before 

 they are able either to fly or to perch. Yet so protec- 

 tive is their coloring and so jealously does the long grass 

 guard its secret that, search as you may within a circle 

 where you know they are hidden, you will not find one 

 of them. For two weeks longer they remain with their 

 parents, learning to hunt grasshoppers, beetles, and 

 crickets, to hide in the shadow of a green tuft, to bathe 

 in the shallows at the brook's edge, and last of all, to 

 perch in low bushes at night with others of their kind. 

 As soon as they have mastered these things, they are 

 able to provide for themselves and are abandoned by 

 the parents. I have a theory that the young of 

 each year go some distance south in companies guided 

 by one or two adults, returning either the next spring 

 or the second season. Some species of birds do not 

 mature fully until two years old, and this seems to be 

 true of Meadowlarks. 



Meanwhile the parents have begun preparations for 

 rearing another brood in the same meadow, but not the 

 same nest. The sun being hotter, this second cradle is 

 more carefully sheltered from its rays by the pulling over 

 of the surrounding grass, and sometimes a runway is 

 made to it, extending four or five feet away. By this 

 the old birds enter and leave the nest proper. 



Dr. Coues, in "Birds of the Northwest," writes of 

 some peculiar habits of the Western Meadowlark as 

 follows : 



33 



