BROWN SONG-LARK. 
she at once sneaks off the nest, such has not been my experience — in fact it 
has always been the reverse, as I have found them to be very close sitters. 
The first nest I found was over twenty years ago, on Barwon Park Station, 
Winchelsea, Victoria, just about Christmas time, while driving in a buggy. 
I flushed the sitting female from the nest within a foot of one of the front wheels. 
A few of them were breeding on a flat near my house in 1914, but the only 
occasion that I went there purposely to look for their nests was on New Year’s 
Day with a young friend. We rode on horseback, and walking our horses about 
the flat, in all we found three nests and in each case the female was flushed 
almost at our horses’ feet ; in one case the bird was no sooner off the nest 
than my horse put his foot on it. But as the males do fly about singing, it is 
quite possible that some of the females did take warning, and leave their nests 
without my knowledge. The nests are rather loosely constructed, composed 
of dry grass, placed in a slight depression in the ground, either in or beneath 
a small tussock. Three eggs usually form a clutch, and they are very late 
breeders in this district. I have never seen a nest before December, but I 
have a clutch of their eggs in my collection found in Queensland as early as 
August 23rd.” 
Captain S. A. White’s notes read : “ This fine bird comes down to the 
Adelaide Plains in the spring and nests in the crops and grass paddocks. It 
is a quaint bird, for it mounts from the ground when flushed singing as it goes, 
then comes down and alights on a post or stump and elevates its tail two or 
three times. The female is very noticeable being so small in comparison with 
the male. This bird appears in the early spring on our Adelaide Plains where 
the male birds sing loudly, rising to a great height singing all the way (the 
notes resemble the words : ‘ Do you want to go to Egypt ’ ^repeated many 
times), then they will come almost straight down with wings extended, making 
a chucking sound. They remain sometimes into the early winter, but became 
silent after nesting ; the female is a shy, silent bird and both sexes run rapidly 
over the ground ; if you go to where one has alighted upon the ground, you 
will find it has run rapidly with head down for some distance, and will then 
look up, bob its tail up and down, and make another run and by the time you 
reach where it settled the bird will be far out of range. It prefers the open 
grassland to any other. Its range extends far into the interior during good 
seasons.” 
Mr. Edwin Ashby’s account states : “A very common bird in all the 
wheat paddocks from the South of this State (South Australia) to north of 
Port Pirie (further north I have not been). It is very fond of sitting on fence 
or telegraph posts near wheat fields, holding its head very high, elevating its 
tail in a most grotesque fashion and pouring forth its song winch, while in 
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