See eee 
BLACK AND WHITE CREEPER. 205 
regularity. The eggs are four, sometimes five, white, marked with 
specks, and several large blotches of reddish brown, chiefly at the thick 
end. Their food consists of caterpillars, grub worms, beetles, and 
grass seeds, with a considerable proportion'of gravel. Their general 
name is the Meadow Lark; among the Virginians, they are usually 
called the Old Field Lark. ea 
The length of this. bird is. ten inches and a half; extent, sixteen 
and a half; throat, breast, belly, and line from the eye to the nostrils, 
rich yellow ; inside lining and edge of the wing, the same ; an oblong 
crescent of deep velvety-black ornaments.the lower part of the throat ; 
lesser wing-coverts, black, broadly. bordered with pale ash ; rest of the 
wing-feathers, light brown, handsomely serrated with black; a line of 
yellowish white divides the crown, bounded on each side by a stripe 
of black, intermixed with bay, and another line of yellowish. white 
passes over each eye, backwards; cheeks, bluish white; back, and 
rest of the upper parts, beautifully variegated with black, bright bay, 
and pale ochre; tail, wedged, the feathers neatly pointed, the four 
outer ones on each side, nearly all white; sides, thighs, and vent, pale 
"yellow ochre, streaked with black; upper mandible, brown; lower, 
bluish white; eyelids, furnished with strong, black hairs; legs and 
feet, very large, and of’a pale flesh color. : 
The female has the black crescent more skirted with gray, and not 
of so deep a black. In the rest of her markings, the plumage differs 
little from that of the male. I must here take notice of a mistake 
committed by Mr. Edwards in his History of Birds, vol. vi. p. 123, 
where, on the authority of. a bird-dealer of London, he describes the 
Calandre Lark, (a native of Italy and Russia,) as belonging also to 
North America, and having been brought from Carolina. I can say 
with confidence, that, in all my excursions through that and the rest of 
the Southern States, I never met such a bird, nor any person who had 
ever seen it. I have no hesitation in believing, that the Calandre is 
not a native of the United States. : 
———e——_. 
(t ; } Ps 
Wh p oe Sadia a nig. EE 
i : . Poy 2 4 
BLACK AND WHITE CREEPER. —CERTHIA aera: 
, — Fie. 91. 
Edw. p)._ 300.—White Poll Warbler, Arct. Zool. 402, No. 293.—Le figuier. 
varié, Buff; v: 305.— Lath. ii. 488.— Turton, i. p. 603. — Peale’s ‘Museum, 
No: 7092. : 
SYLVICOLA VARIA. —Janpinz. * 
Sylvia varia, Bonap. Synop. PR eee oh varié, Mniotilla varia, Vieill. 
-Gall. des Ois. pl. 169. 
Tus nimble and expert little species seldom perches on the small 
twigs; but circumambulates the trunk and larger branches, in quest of 
* This forms the type of Vieillot’s Mniotilla, and will, perhaps, show the scanso- 
rial form in Sylvicola. — Ep. 
