ALAUDA MAGNA. 
1 76 
ivith great regularity. The eggs are four, sometimes 
five, white, marked with specks, and several large 
blotches of reddish brown, chiefly at the thick end. 
Their food consists of caterpillars, grub worms, beetles, 
and grass seeds, with a considerable proportion of gravel. 
Their general name is the meadow lark ; among the 
Virginians, they are usually called the old field lark. 
The length of this bird is ten inches and a half, 
extent, sixteen and a half ; throat, breast, belly, and 
line from the eye to the nostrils, rich yellow ; inside 
lining and edge of the wing, the same; an oblong 
crescent of deep velvety black ornaments the lower 
part of the throat ; lesser wing-coverts, black, broadly 
bordered with pale ash ; rest of the wing feathers, 
light brown, handsomely serrated with black; a line 
of yellowish white divides the crown, bounded on each 
side by a stripe of black, intermixed with bay, and 
another line of yellowish white passes over each eye, 
backwards ; cheeks, bluish white ; back, and rest of 
the upper parts, beautifully variegated with black, 
bright bay, and pale ochre ; tail wedged, the feathers 
neatly pointed, the four outer ones on each side, nearly 
all white ; sides, thighs, and vent, pale yellow ochre, 
streaked with black ; upper mandible, brown ; lower, 
bluish white; eyelids, furnished with strong black hairs ; 
legs and feet, very large, and of a pale flesh colour. 
The female has the black crescent more skirted with 
gray, and not of so deep a black. In the rest of her 
markings, the plumage differs little from that of the 
male. I must here take notice of a mistake committed 
by Mr Edwards in his History of Birds , vol. vi, p. 123, 
where, on the authority of a bird dealer of London, he 
describes the calandre lark, (a native of Italy and 
Iiussia,) as belonging also to North America, and 
having been brought from Carolina. I can say with 
confidence, that, in all my excursions through that and 
the rest of the southern States, I never met such a bird, 
nor any person who had ever seen it. I have no 
hesitation in believing, that the calandre is not a native 
of the United States. 
