THE Sky-LARK. 175 
female, the so-called ‘shoulder’ then appears to be much more angular in the 
former than in the latter sex. I have seen considerable numbers of birds thus 
tested, the males being caged and the females returned to the catchers, and I 
never knew the test to fail: but females are rarely forwarded by experienced bird- 
catchers, most of them being killed at the nets and sold to the poulterers. 
Although abundant enough on moors and commons, downs, grassy cliffs, and 
even mountains, the Sky-Lark certainly prefers arable land, pastures, and parks: 
it seems especially to delight in fields of clover: it shuns all places thickly 
studded with trees, such as woods, copses, and plantations, but is almost always 
to be met with in country cemeteries. 
Excepting when in pursuit of another individual of its own species, the flight 
of the Sky-Lark does not strike one as being particularly rapid; it is somewhat 
undulating, and there is a fluttering motion, even when it is crossing a field, which 
is very characteristic. The male, when soaring, always commences its upward 
flight with this butterfly-like hovering action, and sometimes it is continued until 
it reaches its highest elevation; at other times it rises obliquely and rapidly, its 
song the whole time fitting its movements: in its descent it sometimes drops 
abruptly perhaps for forty or fifty feet, pauses a second and drops again, making 
perhaps three or four stages in its fall, until, as it nears the ground, it flutters 
round in a half-circle to the earth; each drop being accompanied by the finishing 
shrill whee, whee, whee of its song: often it comes down with a wide graceful sweep. 
The nest is placed in a depression in the ground, generally amongst growing 
crops, often merely sheltered on one side by an overhanging tuft of coarse grass 
or other vegetation, and sometimes without any shelter whatever; a singular nest 
with a kind of lid formed of water-weed, which was pointed out to me by a 
shepherd in the Isle of Sheppy, is described in my ‘Handbook.’ The nest itself 
is more or less loosely constructed of dried bents and dead grass, and lined with 
finer grass-stalks. The eggs number from four to five, and sometimes three may 
be found incubated, but it is doubtful whether so small a number ever represents 
a full clutch: in ground-colour they vary a good deal—white, whity-brown, buffish 
clay-coloured, or pale olive-green; generally densely mottled with olive or smoky 
grey-brown over the entire surface, but frequently with a denser zone at the larger, 
and more rarely at the smaller end; sometimes there are a few scattered streaks 
and spots of deeper brown. The most aberrant egg which I have seen was one 
lent to me for illustration in my ‘Handbook’ (pl. XI, fig. 11) which bears a 
curious resemblance to some eggs of the Common Bunting; it is white with a 
deep brown patch at the larger end, shading into sienna and slightly macular 
along its inferior margin. 
