LARKS: DESERT HORNED LARK 
451 
At the northern end of the Staked Plains we found them abundant 
and characteristically occupied, some running over the ground picking 
up seeds and insects, some flying up only to drop down again, and others 
giving their flight song in the air. Although the males, says Mr. Ligon, 
“ usually sit on a low bush or tuft of grass and sing, they also fly high 
in the air floating about singing at all hours of the day” (MS). As 
they fly overhead, Ernest Thompson Seton writes, “they are clearly 
distinguished by their long dark wings, black tail, white body, dark 
head and neck, and their occasional call ‘chee chup/ which happens 
also to be given as an Indian name of the bird in the north” (MS). 
Mr. Ligon considers the Horned Larks the most abundant nesting 
birds in New Mexico. From the Pecos Valley, between Roswell and 
Fort Sumner, June 16-21, 1918, he wrote: “These sociable little fellows 
are to be seen everywhere except in the more broken or brushy parts 
of the valley along the river. At the McKenzie Ranch they were 
seen feeding among the stock in the corrals. I saw young birds, 
June 20, that could fly only short distances, following the parent birds 
for food. No doubt many were nesting, as on several occasions I saw 
the males high up in the air, almost beyond vision, floating and singing. 
The heat was intense during the middle of the day and at this time the 
Larks were often seen in the shadows of fence posts” (MS). 
On Pecos Baldy, July 28, 1903, on an open grassy slope at 12,000 
feet, we found Pipits and half a dozen or more of the Horned Larks, 
including half grown young; and afterwards they were seen in the same 
place a number of times. 
On favorite nesting grounds of the Prairie Horned Lark, George 
Miksch Sutton has noted birds with recognizable mannerisms season 
after season, and he infers that they often remain mated for life. 
During courtship, in giving the ecstatic flight song, the male swings 
back and forth in wide circles in the high sky. The part which the 
female plays in the courtship is slight, Sutton says, but occasionally 
he has heard her “answer the male’s full song with a bright snatch 
of her own.” In choosing the nesting site she looks for a natural cavity; 
then “pecks, scratches, and lacks out the dirt rapidly and determinedly.” 
In looking for nesting material, she “rarely flies but prefers to run 
about as she selects grasses and weed fibers” (1927, pp. 135-136). 
After the nesting season, in September, in the days of the Wheeler 
Survey around Santa Fe, Mr. Henshaw found Montezuma Horned 
Larks gathered in large flocks scattered over the arid plains where they 
fed upon seeds and insects picked up among the sagebrush and other 
bushes. During the latter part of November the plains between Santa 
Fe and Fort Wingate were “fairly alive with these birds, and flocks 
numbering thousands were met with at short intervals” (1875, p. 310). 
