The English Skylark has been more celebrated in poetry than any
other song-bird. Shelley's famous poem is too long to quote and too
symmetrical to present in fragmentary form. It is almost as musical as
the sweet singer itself.
"By the first streak of dawn," says one familiar with the Skylark, "he
bounds from the dripping herbage, and on fluttering wings mounts the
air for a few feet ere giving forth his cheery notes. Then upward,
apparently without effort he sails, sometimes drifting far away as he
ascends, borne as it were by the ascending vapors, so easily he mounts
the air. His notes are so pure and sweet, and yet so loud and varied
withal, that when they first disturb the air of early morning all the
other little feathered tenants of the fields and hedgerows seem
irresistibly compelled to join him in filling the air with melody.
Upwards, ever upwards, he mounts, until like a speck in the highest
ether he appears motionless; yet still his notes are heard, lovely
in their faintness, now gradually growing louder and louder as he
descends, until within a few yards of the earth they cease, and he
drops like a fragment hurled from above into the herbage, or flits
about it for a short distance ere alighting." The Lark sings just as
richly on the ground as when on quivering wing. When in song he is
said to be a good guide to the weather, for whenever we see him rise
into the air, despite the gloomy looks of an overcast sky, fine
weather is invariably at hand.
The nest is most frequently in the grass fields, sometimes amongst
the young corn, or in places little frequented. It is made of dry
grass and moss, and lined with fibrous roots and a little horse hair.
The eggs, usually four or five in number, are dull white, spotted,
clouded, and blotched over the entire surface with brownish green.
The female Lark, says Dixon, like all ground birds, is a very close
sitter, remaining faithful to her charge. She regains her nest by
dropping to the ground a hundred yards or more from its concealment.
The food of the Lark is varied,--in spring and summer, insects and
their larvae, and worms and slugs, in autumn and winter, seeds.
Olive Thorne Miller tells this pretty anecdote of a Skylark which
she emancipated from a bird store: "I bought the skylark, though I
did not want him. I spared no pains to make the stranger happy. I
procured a beautiful sod of uncut fresh grass, of which he at once took
possession, crouching or sitting low among the stems, and looking most
bewitching. He seemed contented, and uttered no more that appealing
cry, but he did not show much intelligence. His cage had a broad base
behind which he delighted to hide, and for hours as I sat in the room
I could see nothing of him, although I would hear him stirring about.
If I rose from my seat he was instantly on the alert, and stretched
his head up to look over at me. I tried to get a better view of him by
hanging a small mirror at an angle over his cage, but he was so much
frightened by it that I removed it."
"This bird," Mrs. Miller says "never seemed to know enough to go home.
Even when very hungry he would stand before his wide open door, where
one step would take him into his beloved grass thicket, and yet that
one step he would not take. When his hunger became intolerable he ran
around the room, circled about his cage, looking in, recognizing his
food dishes, and trying eagerly to get between the wires to reach
them; and yet when he came before the open door he would stand and
gaze, but never go in. After five months' trial, during which he
displayed no particular intelligence, and never learned to enter his
cage, he passed out of the bird room, but not into a store."
[Illustration: From col. F. M. Woodruff.
WILSON'S PHALAROPE.]