210 
The. Horned Lark 
ing in wide aerial circuits he drops by slow stages until at last his hymn | 
is ended, and, closing his wings, he drops like a meteor until near the I 
earth, when he spreads his wings, checking his headlong rush, turns, and 1 
swings along the sod until his toes touch the grass-tops as lightly as the 1 
summer wind, and he comes to earth again near the little nest, the center 
of all his hopes. 
Such is the song-flight of the Prairie Horned Lark — a wonderful 
performance. The last stanza of Shelly’s ‘‘Ode to the Skylark” might 
well be applied to its American cousin: 
“Leave to the Nightingale her shady wood; 
A privacy of glorious light is thine. 
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood ; 
Of harmony, with instinct more divine; ; 
Type of the wise, wdio soar, but never roam — 
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home.” i 
i 
The true larks, of which the Horned Lark is an example, have a long, | 
straight claw (the “lark-spur”) on the hind toe, and a slightly crested ; 
head ; but Horned Larks have in addition over the eye, and extending 
to the back of the head, a pair of narrow, black. 
Characteristics pointed crests that ordinarily lie close to the head ; 
but when the male is excited by passion or surprise 
these crests are erected, so that his head resembles slightly that of 
an owl, with two little black ears sticking up. 
Almost everywhere in the treeless lands of North America Horned 
Larks are found. In the East they breed southward to West Virginia, 
and in the West to Kansas, New Mexico and California. 
In the time of Wilson and Audubon only the typical Horned Lark, 
or “Shore Lark,” a bird of the Atlantic coastal region, was known in the 
East ; but since then a somewhat different western subspecies, the Prairie 
Horned Lark, has expanded its range to the eastward. As the eastern 
country was cleared and settled, more open ground to which it had been 
accustomed became available there? for this subspecies ; and, as the 
western country was settled, trees were grown, much land was put under 
constant cultivation, thousands of larks’ nests were destroyed as the 
farmers turned the prairie sod, and less room remained for this lover 
of the open grass-lands. Possibly for these reasons it 
Change of gradually extended its range eastward to Quebec 
and New England. It is a rather pale variety, with 
some white about the head in place of the yellow of the typical eastern 
bird. The “Desert” subspecies is also extending eastward. 
The beginner in bird-study may not recognize the Horned Larks by 
their flight or by their whistled notes, for both resemble those of the 
American Pipit, or Titlark; but he may know them when they are on the 
ground by their pinkish-brown color, their thick-set, square-shouldered 
look, their mouse-like movements, and the distinct black and yellow, or 
yellowish-white, markings shown by the male bird on the side of the head. 
