410 MICHIGAN BIRD LIFE. 
usually without any yellowish tinge, while the auriculars are grayish white also. The 
same general differences are found between male and female as in the typical alpestris. 
Young: Birds just out of the nest lack the ear-tufts, but show the long hind claw; upper 
parts light grayish brown, mottled with blackish, the head and neck thickly sprinkled 
with small white spots, and most of the wing-feathers and coverts with white edgings and 
narrow black sub-marginal lines; under parts mainly whitish, the breast with numerous 
dusky spots or streaks, but with little or no sign of the black crescent. 
Male: Length 7 to 7.50 inches; wing 4 to 4.30; tail 2.90 to 3.10. Female: Length 
6.75 to 6.85 inches; wing 3.70 to 4; tail 2.60 to 2.90. 
189. Hoyt’s Horned Lark. Otocoris alpestris hoyti Bishop. (474k) 
Synonyms: Otocorys alpestis hoyti, Bishop, 1896, A. O. U. Committee, 1903, and more 
recent authors. 
Similar to the northern Horned Lark, alpestris, but the upper parts 
paler and grayer, the posterior auriculars gray rather than brown, and more 
of the yellow of the head and neck replaced by white. 
Distribution.—In summer, British America from the west shore of Hudson 
Bay to the valley of the Mackenzie River, north to the Arctic Coast, south 
to Lake Athabasca; in winter southward to Nevada, Utah, Kansas and 
Michigan, casually to Ohio and New York. 
This new subspecies of Horned Lark was described by Dr. Bishop in 1896 
and is included in the list of Michigan birds on the strength of a single 
specimen, taken at Grand Rapids (Oberholzer, Proc. U. 8. Nat. Mus. 24, 
812), and two specimens taken in Montmorency county, in the fall of 1908, 
and now in the collection of P. A. Taverner, Ottawa, Can. The latter skins 
have been compared with authentic specimens of typical alpestris and 
hoytt in the collection of J. H. Fleming of Toronto, and there can be 
little question as to identity. 
So far as known this form does not differ in habits from typical alpestris, 
from which it can be discriminated only by the expert, and with which 
it doubtless associates in winter. The technical description which follows 
may give some idea of the bird, but suspected specimens should be sub- 
mitted to some competent ornithologist for critical comparison before their 
capture is published. It seems likely that this subspecies occurs as a 
straggler in Michigan at the same time as the northern Horned Lark, 
alpestris, but even this fact is not actually known. 
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION. 
“Similar to Otocoris a. alpestris, but with the upper parts generally paler and more gray, 
the posterior auriculars gray rather than brown, and the yellow of the head and neck 
replaced by white, except the forehead, which is dirty yellowish white, and the throat, 
which is distinctly yellow, most pronounced toward the center. Adult male: Length 
7.35 inches; wing, 4.54; tail, 3.01; bill from nostril, .41; tarsus, .89. The adult female in 
spring plumage differs in a similar manner from the female of alpestris, but in the female 
of hoytt the yellow on the throat is much paler than in the male”’ (L. B. Bishop, Auk, XIII, 
1896, p. 130). 
