86 
SHORE LARK. 
on their route to the nortli. # Forster informs us, that they 
visit the environs of Albany Fort in the beginning of May ; 
but go farther north to breed ; that they feed on grass seeds, 
and buds of the sprig birch, and run into small holes, keeping 
close to the ground, from whence the natives call them Chi - 
chup-pi-sue . f This same species appears also to be found in 
Poland, Russia, and Siberia, in winter, from whence they also 
retire farther north on the approach of spring ; except in the 
northeast parts, and near the high mountains.^ 
The length of this bird is seven inches, the extent twelve 
inches ; the forehead, throat, sides of the neck, and line over 
the eye, are of a delicate straw, or Naples yellow, elegantly 
relieved by a bar of black, that passes from the nostril to the 
eye, below which it falls, rounding, to the depth of three 
quarters of an inch ; the yellow on the forehead and over the 
eye, is bounded within, for its whole length, with black, 
which covers part of the crown; the breast is ornamented 
with a broad fan-shaped patch of black : this, as well as all 
the other spots of black, are marked with minute curves of 
yellow points ; back of the neck, and towards the shoulders, a 
light drab tinged with lake; lesser wing-coverts, bright 
cinnamon ; greater wing-coverts, the same, interiorly dusky, 
and tipt with whitish ; back and wings, drab-coloured, tinged 
with reddish, each feather of the former having a streak of 
* In winter, says Pennant, they retire to the southern provinces in great 
flights ; but it is only by severe weather that they reach Virginia and Carolina. 
They frequent sand hills on the sea shore, and feed on the sea-side oats, or 
Uniola paniculata. They have a single note, like the Sky Lark in winter. — 
Temminck mentions them as birds of passage in Germany, and that they 
breed also in Asia. One or two specimens have lately been killed in England, 
so that their geographic range is pretty considerable. The Alauda calandra of 
Linnaeus is introduced into the Northern Zoology , as an inhabitant of the Fur 
countries, on the authority of a specimen in the British Museum, and will 
stand as the second Lark found in that country Ed. 
f Philosophical Transactions , vol. lxii. p. 398. 
J Arctic Zoology. 
