SKY LARK. 



465 



that it does nothing more than clear away whatever withered herbage 

 or other rubbish may be lying where the foundation is to be placed, I 

 shall give the statement alluded to, leaving it to the reader to verify it 

 when opportunity offers. " The lark," says Mr. Mudie, " selects her 

 ground with care, avoiding clayey places, unless she can find two clods 

 so placed as that no part of a nest between them would be below the 

 surface. In more friable soils, she scrapes till she has not only formed 

 a little cavity, but loosened the bottom of it to some depth. Over this, 

 the first layers are placed very loosely, so that if any rain should get 

 in at the top, it may sink to the bottom, and there be absorbed by the 

 soil. The edges of the nest are also raised a little above the surface, 

 have a slope outwards, and are, as it were, thatched. The position in 

 which the bird sits is a further security ; the head is always turned to 

 the weather ; the feathers of the breast and throat completely prevent 

 the rain from entering the nest at that side, while the wings and tail 

 act as pent houses in the other parts ; and if the weather is violent, and 

 the rain at a small angle with the horizon, the fore part of the bird upon 

 which the plumage is thickest, receives the whole of it." 1 



I am most ready to admit that all this is very pretty, though I fear 

 it has a little dash of the poetical to set off the facts to advantage. It 

 is more so, indeed, than the professed poetical sketch of Grahame, who, 

 speaking of the Sky Lark, says, — 



" The daisied lea, he loves, where tufts of grass 

 Luxuriant crown the ridge ; there, with his mate, 

 He founds their lowly house, of withered herbs, 

 And coarsest spear-grass ; next, the inner work, 

 With finer, and still finer fibres lays, 

 Rounding it curious with his speckled breast." 2 * 



The eggs are generally four in number, rather larger than those of a 

 tit lark, weighing above fifty grains, of a dirty white, blotched and 

 spotted with brown. It begins to breed in May, and will lay as late as 

 September, if the first nests are destroyed. The history of this delight- 

 ful singing bird is so generally known, that to say more of it is useless. 

 It has been asserted that the Sky Lark never perches ; but this is a 

 mistake, for we have frequently seen it perch on the top of a bush, and 

 sometimes on the branch of a tree. 



* Doctor Latham remarks, that the duty paid at Leipsic for larks, 

 amounts to 12,000 crowns per annum, at a grosch, or two pence half- 



1 Brit. Naturalist, ii. p. 118. 

 Birds ef Scotland, p. 3. Architecture of Birds. Chap, on Ground-Builders, p r 59. 



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