Called also: FIELD LARK; OLDFIELD LARK; [EASTERN MEADOWLARK, AOU
1998]
Length -- 10 to 11 inches. A trifle larger than the robin.
Male -- Upper parts brown, varied with chestnut, deep brown, and
black. Crown streaked with brown and black, and with a
cream-colored streak through the centre. Dark-brown line
apparently running through the eye; another line over eye,
yellow. Throat and chin yellow; a large conspicuous black
crescent on breast. Underneath yellow, shading into buffy
brown, spotted or streaked with very dark brown, Outer tail
feathers chiefly white, conspicuous in flight. Long, strong
legs and claws, adapted for walking. Less black in winter
plumage, which is more grayish brown.
Female -- Paler than male.
Range -- North America, from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico,
and westward to the plains, where the Western meadowlark takes
its place. Winters from Massachusetts and Illinois southward.
Migrations -- April. Late October. Usually a resident, a few
remaining through the winter.
In the same meadows with the red-winged blackbirds, birds of another feather,
but of the same family, nevertheless, may be found flocking together, hunting
for worms and larvae, building their nests, and rearing their young very near
each other with the truly social instinct of all their kin.
The meadowlarks, which are really not larks at all, but the blackbirds' and
orioles' cousins, are so protected by the coloring of the feathers on their
backs, like that of the grass and stubble they live among, that ten blackbirds
are noticed for every meadowlark although the latter is very common. Not until
you flush a flock of them as you walk along the roadside or through the
meadows and you note the white tail feathers and the black crescents on the
yellow breasts of the large brown birds that rise towards the tree-tops with
whirring sound and a flight suggesting the quail's, do you suspect there are
any birds among the tall grasses.
Their clear and piercing whistle, "Spring o' the y-e-a-r, Spring o' the year!"
rings out from the trees with varying intonation and accent, but always sweet
and inspiriting. To the bird's high vantage ground you may not follow, for no
longer having the protection of the high grass, it has become wary and flies
away as you approach, calling out peent-peent and nervously flitting its tail
(again showing the white feather), when it rests a moment on the pasture
fence-rail.
It is like looking for a needle in a haystack to try to find a meadowlark's
nest, an unpretentious structure of dried grasses partly arched over and
hidden in a clump of high timothy, flat upon the ground. But what havoc snakes
and field-mice play with the white-speckled eggs and helpless fledglings! The
care of rearing two or three broods in a season and the change of plumage to
duller winter tints seem to exhaust the high spirits of the sweet whistler.
For a time he is silent, but partly regains his vocal powers in the autumn,
when, with large flocks of his own kind, he resorts to marshy feeding grounds.
In the winter he chooses for companions the horned larks, that walk along the
shore, or the snow buntings and sparrows of the inland pastures, and will even
include the denizens of the barn-yard when hunger drives him close to the
haunts of men.
The Western Meadowlark or Prairie Lark (Sturnella magna neglecta), which many
ornithologists consider a different species from the foregoing [as does AOU
1998], is distinguished chiefly by its lighter, more grayish-brown plumage, by
its yellow cheeks, and more especially by its richer, fuller song. In his
"Birds of Manitoba" Mr. Ernest E. Thompson says of this meadowlark: "In
richness of voice and modulation it equals or excels both wood thrush and
nightingale, and in the beauty of its articulation it has no superior in the
whole world of feathered choristers with which I am acquainted."