318 USEFUL BIRDS. 
a perch, or while the bird is on the wing. Rarely a talented 
individual soars aloft, uttering an ecstatic flight song, which 
compares favorably with that of the most celebrated song- 
sters. I have heard this in full volume but once, and then 
found it difficult to believe that it came from the throat of a 
common Meadowlark. It was not at all suggestive of that 
bird’s ordinary song, except in some of the last notes, nor 
did it in the least resemble that of the Western Meadow- 
lark ; it more resembled the music of the Bobolink, but was 
louder and not so hurriedly given. 
The Meadowlark is now quite generally protected by law 
at all times, and no bird more fully deserves such protection. 
It is practically harmléss, and takes nothing that is of any 
use to man except a few small grains and seeds. On the 
other hand, it is one of the most useful birds of the fields, 
perhaps the most valuable. In summer almost ninety-nine 
per cent. of its food consists of insects and allied forms. It 
eats about all the principal pests of the fields, and is particu- 
larly destructive to cutworms, hairy ground caterpillars, and 
grasshoppers. In summer it gets but few seeds, but in fall 
and winter it takes many weed seeds. It visits weedy corn- 
fields and gardens in search of ragweed and other seeds, of 
which it devours enormous quantities, which make up about 
one-third of the food for the year. Even in winter it pre- 
fers insects when it can get them. Mr. C. W. Nash says, 
in his “Birds of Ontario,” that several specimens shot in 
winter contained only insects, taken about market gardens. 
Professor Beal says that even in December and January the 
insect components of the food are thirty-nine and twenty- 
four per cent., respectively ; and in March, when insects are 
still hard to obtain, the quantity rises to seventy-three per 
cent. Professor Beal makes an ingenious and very moderate 
estimate, from which he concludes that twenty-five dollars’ 
worth of hay is saved annually in an ordinary township 
by Meadowlarks, through their destruction of grasshoppers, 
and he values hay at only ten dollars per ton. When we 
consider that grasshoppers, green grasshoppers, locusts, and 
crickets all together form twenty-nine per cent. of the food 
of this bird for the year, and that it is almost entirely in- 
