MEADOWLARKS, BLACKBIRDS, ETC.: MEADOWLARK 641 
portant to earn protection wherever it is found” (Beal). In winter it “hunts out the 
egg pods of the grasshoppers” (Merrill). At this season it is “a valuable asset as a 
destroyer of hibernating insects, especially the alfalfa weevil” (Kalmbach). When 
coulee crickets were devastating fields near Adrian, Washington, Meadowlarks 
appeared in great numbers and fed upon the crickets so effectively that the 1919 
campaign against crickets was abandoned (Burrill). 
General Habits. —An occasional Western Meadowlark, as E. A. 
Preble tells us, “pushes northward in spring far beyond the regular 
range,” and in northern British Columbia has been found actually in 
Hudsonian Zone. His explanation of its appearance is suggestive and 
interesting in view of other apparent zonal irregularities that puzzle 
the student. As he says, “Although one has difficulty in picturing 
the Meadowlark as a summer inhabitant of Hudsonian Zone valleys 
tenanted by breeding Willow Ptarmigans and Golden-crowned Sparrows, 
yet from the standpoint of one on the ground, the surroundings seem 
not necessarily uncongenial. During June and July, owing to the 
long hours of sunlight, the days are warm, often hot, and the nights are 
too short to become very cool. Herbaceous vegetation, with its 
accompanying insect life, is abundant, and there would seem to be no 
insuperable obstacle to the breeding of a comparatively hardy bird 
like the Meadowlark, any more than in the case of the Western Chip¬ 
ping Sparrow, whose nests were found within a few miles” (1926, p. 96). 
In New Mexico, open country and water seem to be the Meadow¬ 
lark’s two requirements. When, in traveling over the arid plains, a 
water tank comes in sight, the sight is likely to be followed by a stirring 
sound, a strain of rare song from a ground-colored bird flying on out¬ 
stretched wings, beating and soaring, to finally sail down to a patch 
of green. As he soars and sails with wings and white-bordered tail 
outspread, the white flags point his course, but when he drops to the 
ground, where his brown body, well camouflaged with its broken mark¬ 
ings, disappears against the ground, his white-bordered tail closes to 
a narrow black-barred band of brown and he is lost to view, greatly 
to the bewilderment of pursuing enemies. While this upper exposed 
part of his plumage is strictly utilitarian, when he turns his breast to 
his mate she sees a rare object of beauty—his golden front with its 
adorning jet black necklace. 
In the nesting season Mr. Ligon has found Meadowlarks at suitable 
places all over the Pecos Valley, but most commonly along river and 
creek valleys where the salt grass grows, becoming green during even 
the diyest seasons. In the fall migration at our Laguna camp, where 
there were water holes and a broad meadow full of grasshoppers, a 
number of the birds were feeding during our stay. Ten were counted 
at one time, and parts of their spring song were heard at intervals 
