The Horned Larks 
his business keeps him in the same field, he will reappear presently, 
picking from the ground with affected nonchalance, at a rod’s remove; 
or else, pausing to face you frankly with those interesting feather-tufts 
of inquiry, supported by black moustachios and jetty gorget on a ground 
of pale primrose. 
A dusty road possesses irresistible attractions for our hero; and a 
traveler’s progress, whether a-foot or a-wheel, in any interior country, 
may be measured by the number of Horned Larks displaced per mile. 
Displacement is no easy matter, either. The lark knows that that dusty 
road was made especially for him, and if you are rude enough to dis¬ 
possess him, he will alight a rod or so ahead and survey you with mild 
reproach. If the intruder is in an automobile, the moment of survey is 
necessarily brief, but the bird will try again. A spirited passage of 
flitting and lighting ensues, in which the bird becomes fairly crazed in 
his determination to maintain a footing on that roadway; and, as a 
result, he misses death repeatedly by margins which the man at the 
wheel does not like to contemplate. 
The unseeing class the Horned Larks among “brown birds” and 
miss the vaulting spirit beneath the modest mien. Yet our gentle Lark 
is of noble blood and ancient lineage. The Skylark, of peerless fame, 
is his own cousin; and while he cannot hope to vie with the foreign bird 
in song, the same poet soul is in him. A devoted Englishman, for some 
years resident on the edge of a certain Pacific prairie, having realized a 
competence, imported at no small expense a consignment of some forty 
English Skylarks. When I told him that there was a native lark already 
resident on that same prairie, he was dumbfounded. Cherishing only 
the fond memories of boyhood, he had altogether overlooked the offerings 
of his adopted home. Of course the Skylarks all died, as objects of such 
misplaced charity usually do; but the Streaked Horned Larks still flourish 
on that prairie near Tacoma. Whether in the pasture, therefore, or on 
the gravelly hillside, or in the desert, the coming of spring proclaims our 
gentle poet laureate; and in many places the chief vocal interest of nesting 
time centers in the song-flight of the male Horned Lark. 
The song itself is, perhaps, nothing remarkable, a little ditty, or 
succession of sprightly syllables which have no considerable resonance or 
modulation, although they quite defy vocalization; yet such are the 
circumstances attending its delivery that it is set down by everyone as 
“pleasing,” while for the initiated it possesses a charm which is quite 
unique. Twidge-widge, widgity, widgy-widge, conveys no idea of the 
tone-quality, indeed, but may serve to indicate the proportion and 
tempo of the common song; while Twidge, widgity, eelooy, eelooy, idgity, 
eelooy, eew, may serve the same purpose for the rare ecstasy song. The 
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