THE MEADOW-LARK. 
219 
Monday, 30th. — Very warm. Thermometer 80 in the house ; 
89 in the shade without. 
Walking in the lane toward evening, saw a couple of meadow- 
larks in great agitation ; perhaps some disaster had befallen their 
young ; it seems rather late for them to have little ones, but they 
raise two broods in the summer. They were flying from one 
bush to another, and back again over the same ground, crying as 
they went quite piteously. These birds build on the ground ; 
their nest is made of different grassy plants, quite cleverly con- 
trived, and almost always placed in a meadow. They are decid- 
edly larger and handsomer than the European sky-lark, but their 
simple note is not at all remarkable ; the female sings a little as 
she rises and falls, like the Avife of the red-wing black-bird. Their 
flight is very different from that of their European kinsman, being 
heavy and laborious ; they like, however, to perch on the very 
highest branches of trees, which is singular in birds living so 
much on the ground, and moving apparently with some effort. 
Climate seems to affect them but little, for they reach from the 
tropics to 53' north latitude, and they are resident birds in the 
lower counties of our own State, though never remaining, I be- 
lieve, among these hills. 
It is to be regretted that neither of the two great singing-birds 
of the Old World is found in America ; that both the sky-lark and 
the nightingale should be strangers on this side the Atlantic. In 
some respects the nightingale differs from the common notions 
regarding it in this country. We have read so much of " plain- 
tive Philomel," that most of us fancy a solitary bird, in the deep 
recesses of the grove, chanting by moonhght an air " most mu- 
sical, most melancholy." But this is far from being always the 
