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Volvime XV July-A.vigvist, 1913 Number 
A NEST OF THE DUSKY HORNED LARK 
By CLARENCE HAMILTON KENNEDY 
WITH ONE DRAWING BY THE AUTHOR 
W HILE walking- through the sage brush on March 26, I almost stepped 
on the nest of a pair of Dusky Horned Larks (Otocons alpestns mer- 
rilli). The Dusky Lark is the most common bird in the brush areas of 
the Lower Yakima Valley, but nevertheless this is only the second nest I have 
found in four seasons. Because of the very (|uiet and furtive habits of the birds, 
they never betray the location of nests, which are found only by stumbling onto 
them. 
This one was a cup-shaped depression, dug in the sand at the base of a sage 
bush, thickly lined with soft grass, leaves and stems, and with shreds of sage 
brush bark. In the bottom was a thick layer of the soft downy pappus of some 
composite. The nest contained three young, which were not more than two days 
old, for they were very small and their eyes were not yet open, while they were 
scantily covered with creamy down. I lingered over the nest several minutes, 
but the bird which I supposed was a parent remained on a fence post fifty yards 
away, and did not show any great distress. One young opened his bill but none 
made any sound. 
I visited the nest again four days later, on March 30. As on the first visit, 
no parent bird was discovered near the nest, but after I had spent several minutes 
trying to adjust a camera for a picture, one of them circled about at a distance 
of thirty feet uttering sharp cries, and finally flew to a fence fifty yards away, 
where it perched during the remainder of my stay. The three young on this day 
had increased wonderfully in size. They were so large that they were crowding 
out of the nest. The illustration shows them as they appeared at this time. Their 
eyes were wide open and they were fully feathered, with only a vestige of down 
about the neck. The individual birds occupied the same positions in the nest that 
they had on my previous visit. With the exception of the white underneath the 
