eard there in my youth, namely, the
prairie horned lark. Flocks of these birds used to be seen in some of
the Northern States in the late fall during their southern migrations;
but within the last twenty years they have become regular summer
residents in the hilly parts of many sections of New York and New
England. They are genuine skylarks, and lack only the powers of song
to make them as attractive as their famous cousins of Europe.

The larks are ground-birds when they perch, and sky-birds when they
sing; from the turf to the clouds--nothing between. Our horned lark
mounts upward on quivering wing in the true lark fashion, and, spread
out against the sky at an altitude of two or three hundred feet,
hovers and sings. The watcher and listener below holds him in his eye,
but the ear catches only a faint, broken, half-inarticulate note now
and then--mere splinters, as it were, of the song of the skylark. The
song of the latter is continuous, and is loud and humming; it is a
fountain of jubilant song up there in the sky: but our lark sings in
snatches; at each repetition of its notes it dips forward and downward
a few feet, and then rises again. One day I kept my eye upon one until
it had repeated its song one hundred and three times; then it closed
its wings, and dropped toward the earth like a plummet, as does its
European congener. While I was watching the bird, a bobolink flew over
my head, between me and the lark, and poured out his voluble and
copious strain. "What a contrast," I thought, "between the voice of
the spluttering, tongue-tied lark, and the free, liquid, and varied
song of the bobolink!"

I have heard of a curious fact in the life-histories of these larks in
the West. A Michigan woman once wrote me that her brother, who was an
engineer on an express train that made daily trips between two Western
cities, reported that many birds were struck by the engine every day,
and killed--often as many as thirty on a trip of sixty miles. Birds of
many kinds were killed, but the most common was a bird that went in
flocks, the description of which answered to the horned lark. Since
then I have read in a Minnesota newspaper that many horned larks are
killed by railroad locomotives in that State. It was thought that the
birds sat behind the rails to get out of the wind, and on starting up
in front of the advancing train, were struck down by the engine. The
Michigan engineer referred to thought that the birds gathered u