Food.—When wild, the food consists of all sorts of flies, grasshoppers, caterpillars, butterflies, beetles, and ants’ eggs.
In confinement, as it is the most delicate of its species, the food must be frequently changed and varied. Besides the universal paste, we should sometimes give it the common food of the nightingale, sometimes bruised hemp, mouldy cheese, meal worms, and ants’ eggs.
It is very difficult to accustom it to take the food of the bird-room. As soon as it arrives, we must throw it some meal worms, ants’ eggs, or caterpillars; as soon as these are eaten, some must be mixed with the universal paste and with all its food; it will thus insensibly grow accustomed to the common food.
This lark does not roll in the sand, and dust itself like the others, but it thrusts its beak into water and sprinkles itself; another indication of its approximation to the wagtail, as was mentioned above.
Breeding.—The titlark lays twice a year. The nest, placed on the ground in a cleared part of the woods, or under a bush or hillock, in a tuft of grass, in a field or orchard, is made in the simplest manner; coarse hay outside and finer within, with some wool and hair, are all the materials. The eggs, in number from four to five, are gray mottled with brown; the young escape as soon as possible, having but too many enemies to fear on the ground.
They may be brought up with ants’ eggs and white bread soaked in boiled milk, to which a few poppy-seeds are added. They easily learn to imitate the songs of the birds in the same room with them, especially that of the canary, without however attaining any great perfection.
Diseases.—Independent of those which are common to the other birds of its species, it is particularly subject to the loss of its feathers out of the moulting season; if it is not at once supplied with food more nutritious, and better suited to its natural habits, as ants’ eggs, meal worms, and other insects, it soon dies of atrophy. At the best it can only be preserved five or six years[63].
Mode of Taking.—To take the bird from its nest by a limed twig, and thus destroy the young family by hunger and misery, is a cruelty which none but a harsh insensible amateur could resolve upon. I prefer using the night-net in autumn; this bird is also caught in the water-trap in August and September.
Attractive Qualities.—The song of the titlark, though short, and composed of only three strains mixed with shakes and trills, is nevertheless very pleasing. It sings from the end of March to July, either from the top of a tree, where it is perched, or when rising perpendicularly in the air, where it remains a few minutes and then quietly descends, almost always to the same place. As it alights it repeats several times “tzia, tzia, tzia.” In the house it begins to sing a month earlier. It pleases also by its pretty ways; its step is somewhat grave, and the tail is in perpetual motion: it is always very clean and trim.