456 
GRANIVOROUS BIRDS. 
they are more common at this season, and are particu- 
larly numerous in South Carolina and Georgia, frequent- 
ing open plains, old fields, common grounds, and the dry 
shores and banks of bays and rivers, keeping constantly on 
the ground, and roving about in families under the guid- 
ance of the older birds, who, watching for any approaching 
danger, give the alarm to the young in a plaintive call, very 
similar to that which is uttered by the Sky-Lark in the 
same circumstances. Inseparable in all their movements, 
like the hen and her fostered chickens, they roost together 
in a close ring or company, by the mere edge of some 
sheltering weed or tuft of grass on the dry and gravelly 
ground ; and, thickly and warmly clad, they abide the 
frost and the storm with hardy indifference. They fly 
rather high and loose, in scattered companies, and follow 
no regular time of migration, but move onward only as 
their present resources begin to fail. They are usually 
fat, esteemed as food, and are frequently seen exposed for 
sale in our markets. Their diet, as usual, consists of 
various kinds of seed^ which still remain on the grass 
and weeds they frequent, and they also swallow a con- 
siderable portion of gravel to assist their digestion. They 
also collect the eggs and dormant larvae of insects when 
they fall in their way. About the middle of March they 
retire to the North, and are seen about the beginning of 
May round Hudson’s Bay, after which they are no more 
observed till the return of autumn. They are said to 
sing well ; rising into the air and warbling as they as- 
cend, in the manner of the Sky-Lark of Europe. 
The length of the Shore Lark is something more than 7 inches, 
and the alar extent about 12. A broad fan-shaped portion of black on 
the breast, in which as well as in the black spot beneath the eye, the 
feathers are slenderly edged with pale yellow ; back of the neck and 
towards the shoulders greyish-brown, tinged with obscure rose-red. 
Lesser coverts of the wings bright cinnamon ; greater wing-coverts 
