232 LARK BUNTING. 



NAMES: Dickcissel, Black-throated Bunting, Little Meadow Lark, Little Field Lark, Judas Bird, Judas 

 Iscariot. — Schildammer (German). 



SCIENTIFIC NAMES: Bmheriza americana Gmel. (1788). Easpka americana Bonap. (1838). SPIZA 

 AMERICANA Ridgw. (1880). 



DESCRIPTION: "Adult male: Head and sides of the neck, ashy-gray; forehead, tinged with 3'ellow; a 

 yellow line over the eye and one on the side of the throat; a black patch on the throat; chin, white; 

 " breast, yellow, spreading down on the white belly ; back, streaked with black and pale grayish-brown ; 

 rump, brownish-ash; lesser wing-coverts, rufous; wings and tail, fuscous. Adult female: Similar, but 

 the head grayish-brown, streaked with blackish, and with no black patch on the throat and less 

 yellow on the breast, which is sometimes lightly streaked with black. 



"Length, 6.00 inches; wing, 3.20; tail, 2.35 inches; bill, .55." (Prank M. Chapman.) 



LARK BUNTING, 



Calamospiza melanocorys StejnEGER. 



^HIS interesting bird has a restricted range, being found ft^m the Plains of middle 

 Kansas north to Manitoba and Assiniboia, west to the Rocky Mountains, less 

 commonly to the Pacific in southern California, and south to Guanajuato and Lower 

 California. As I have never had an opportunity to observe this bird in its home, the 

 grassy western plains, I quote the following from Dr. Elliott Coues' excellent work, 

 "Birds of the North-west": 



"The Lark Bunting is one of the most singularly specialized of all our fringilline 

 forms. As implied in its name, it has somewhat the habits of a Lark, and shares the 

 long inner secondary quills. An eminently terrestrial bird, yet the hind claw is neither 

 lengthened -nor straightened as is usual with passerine birds frequenting the ground 

 almost exclusively. The bill is that of a Grosbeak, being shaped almost exactly like 

 that of Blua. Grosbeak for instance, and the sexual differences in plumage are as great 

 as in that bird. But a more remarkable circumstance still is the seasonal change of 

 plumage, which is exactly correspondent with that of the Bobolink, to which the species 

 bears a general similarity in coloration. This fact was first noticed, I believe, by 

 Mr. Allen: 'After the moulting season, the males assume the plumage of the female, the 

 change in color being similar to that of the males of the Bobolink.' There is still another 

 curious analogy, that the same writer has brought out: 'It has habits that strongly 

 recall the Yellow-breasted Chat, singing generally on the wing, hovering in the same 

 manner as that bird, while its notes are so similar to those of the Chat, as to be 

 scarcely distinguishable from them.' 



"I found it common from the plains in Kansas to the Raton Mountains, westward 

 of which I never saw it. In some places it was extremely abundant, and fairly to be 

 considered the characteristic species. This was in June, when the birds were breeding, 

 apparently in straggling groups, keeping up somewhat of association, but by no means 

 intimate companionship, still less flocking ; each pair finding its own business sufficiently 



