Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 
towards the tree-tops with whirring sound and a flight suggest- 
ing the quail’s, do you suspect there are any birds among the 
tall grasses. 
Their clear and piercing whistle, “Spring o’ the y-e-a-r. 
Spring o’ the year ! ” rings out from the trees with varying in- 
tonation and accent, but always sweet and inspiriting. To the 
bird’s high vantage ground you may not follow, for no longer 
having the protection of the high grass, it has become wary and 
flies away as you approach, calling out peent-peent and nervously 
flitting its tail (again showing the white feather), when it rests a 
moment on the pasture fence-rail. 
It is like looking for a needle in a haystack to try to find a 
meadowlark’s nest, an unpretentious structure of dried grasses 
partly arched over and hidden in a clump of high timothy, flat 
upon the ground. But what havoc snakes and field-mice play 
with the white-speckled eggs and helpless fledglings ! The care 
of rearing two or three broods in a season and the change of 
plumage to duller winter tints seem to exhaust the high spirits of 
the sweet whistler. For a time he is silent, but partly regains his 
vocal powers in the autumn, when, with large flocks of his own 
kind, he resorts to marshy feeding grounds. In the winter he 
chooses for companions the horned larks, that walk along the. 
shore, or the snow buntings and sparrows of the inland pastures, 
and will even include the denizens of the barn-yard when hunger 
drives him close to the haunts of men. 
The Western Meadowlark or Prairie Lark (Sturnella magna 
neglecta), which many ornithologists consider a different species 
from the foregoing, is distinguished chiefly by its lighter, more 
grayish-brown plumage, by its yellow cheeks, and more espe- 
cially by its richer, fuller song. In his “ Birds of Manitoba” Mr.' 
Ernest E. Thompson says of this meadowlark : “In richness of 
voice and modulation it equals or excels both wood thrush and 
nightingale, and in the beauty of its articulation it has no superior 
in the whole world of feathered choristers with which 1 am 
acquainted.” 
*33 
