The most interesting part, I mean, of that which appealed to the ear; for, as will readily be imagined, the ear’s part was really much the smaller half of the performance. The wonder of it all was not the music by itself (that was hardly better than an oddity, a thing of which one might soon have enough), but the music combined with the manner of its delivery, while the singer was climbing heavenward. For the bird is a true skylark. Like his more famous cousin, he does not disdain the humblest perch—a mere clod of earth answers his purpose; but his glory is to sing at heaven’s gate.

His method at such times was a surprise to me. He starts from the ground silently, with no appearance of lyrical excitement, and his flight at first is low, precisely as if he were going only to the next field. Soon, however, he begins to mount, beating the air with quick strokes and then shutting his wings against his sides and forcing himself upward. “Diving upward,” was the word I found myself using. Up he goes,—up, up, up, “higher still, and higher,”—till after a while he breaks into voice. While singing he holds his wings motionless, stiffly outstretched, and his tail widely spread, as if he were doing his utmost to transform himself into a parachute—as no doubt he is. Then, the brief, hurried strain delivered, he beats the air again and makes another shoot heavenward. The whole display consists of an alternation of rests accompanied by song (you can always see the music, though it is often inaudible), and renewed upward pushes.

In the course of his flight the bird covers a considerable field, since as a matter of course he cannot ascend vertically. He rises, perhaps, directly at your feet, but before he comes down, which may be in one minute or in ten, he will have gone completely round you in a broad circle; so that, to follow him continuously (sometimes no easy matter, his altitude being so great and the light so dazzling), you will be compelled almost to put your neck out of joint. In our own case, we generally did not see him start, but were made aware of what was going on by hearing the notes overhead.

One grand flight I did see from beginning to end, and it was wonderful, amazing, astounding. So I thought, at all events. There was no telling, of course, what altitude the bird reached, but it might have been miles, so far as the effect upon the beholder’s emotions was concerned. It seemed as if the fellow never would be done. “Higher still, and higher.” Again and again this line of Shelley came to my lips, as, after every bar of music, the bird pushed nearer and nearer to the sky. At last he came down; and this, my friend and I always agreed, was the most exciting moment of all. He closed his wings and literally shot to the ground head first, like an arrow. “Wonderful!” said I, “wonderful!” And the other man said: “If I could do that I would never do anything else.”

Here my story might properly enough end. The nest of which we had talked was not discovered. My own beating over of the fields came to nothing, and my companion, as if unwilling to deprive me of a possible honor, contented himself with telling me that I was looking in the wrong place. Perhaps I was. It is easy to criticise. For a minute, indeed, one of the farm-hands excited our hopes. He had found a nest which might be the lark’s, he thought; it was on the ground, at any rate; but his description of the eggs put an end to any such possibility, and when he led us to the nest it turned out to be occupied by a hermit thrush. Near it he showed us a grouse sitting upon her eggs under a roadside fence. It was while repairing the fence that he had made his discoveries. He had an eye for birds. “Those little humming-birds,” he remarked, “they’re quite an animal.” And he was an observer of human nature as well. “That fellow,” he said, speaking of a young man who was perhaps rather good-natured than enterprising, “that fellow don’t do enough to break the Sabbath.”

And this suggests a bit of confession. We were sitting upon the piazza, on Sunday afternoon, when a lark sang pretty far off. “Well,” said the botanist, “he sings as well as a savanna sparrow, anyhow.” “A savanna sparrow!” said I; and at the word we looked at each other. The same thought had come to both of us. Several days before, in another part of the township, we had heard in the distance—in a field inhabited by savanna and vesper sparrows—an utterly strange set of bird-notes. “What is that?” we both asked. The strain was repeated. “Oh, well,” said I, “that must be the work of a crazy savanna. Birds are given to such freaks, you know.” The grass was wet, we had a long forenoon’s jaunt before us, and although my companion, as he said, “took no stock” in my explanation, we passed on. Now it flashed upon us both that what we had heard was the song of a prairie lark. “I believe it was,” said the botanist. “I know it was,” said I; “I would wager anything upon it.” And it was; for after returning to the hotel our first concern was to go to the place—only half a mile away—and find the bird. And not only so, but twenty-four hours later we saw one soaring in his most ecstatic manner over another field, a mile or so beyond, beside the same road.

The present was a good season for horned larks in Franconia, we told ourselves. Two years ago, at this same time of the year, I had gone more than once past all these places. If the birds were here then I overlooked them. The thing is not impossible, of course; there is no limit to human dullness; but I prefer to think otherwise. A man, even an amateur ornithologist, should believe himself innocent until he is proved guilty.

A QUIET MORNING

“Such was the bright world on the first seventh day.”

Henry Vaughan.