It seems almost superfluous to give a word of description concerning this well-known and almost universally distributed song bird. The upper parts of the Lavrock, as it is sometimes called, are of varying shades of brown, the darkest being in the centres of the feathers, and the lightest on their edges. The under parts are pale straw colour, tinged in parts with brown and spotted on the breast with a dark hue of that colour. It is about seven inches in length, and, as most of my readers will have noticed, has a greatly elongated hind claw. This interesting provision of Nature acts the useful part of a snow-shoe during severe weather in the winter.
Although it leaves its higher breeding grounds in the autumn this species stays with us all the year round, and has its numbers greatly increased by migrants arriving from the Continent.
The Skylark breeds in cultivated and uncultivated districts alike throughout the country. I have found its nest within a few yards of the open Atlantic and at an elevation of nearly two thousand feet above sea-level.
SKYLARK’S NEST AND EGGS.
The nest is placed on the ground in a slight hollow scratched out by the bird under tufts of grass, ling, heath, in corn, and amongst the sun-baked clods of fallow fields. It is made of grass rootlets and horsehair—frequently nothing but the first-named, used sparingly with the slenderest blades forming the inner lining. I have found larks’ eggs from April until the end of July. They number four or five, of a dirty white ground colour, occasionally tinged with olive-green, thickly speckled and spotted with olive-brown and underlying markings of brownish-grey.
The sprightly song of the Skylark is probably better known and remembered by most people than even the appearance of the familiar little brown bird itself. Poets of all ages have praised it in their verse, but nobody has ever excelled Shakespeare’s golden line:
“Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings.”
In a moderate breeze the Lavrock rises almost perpendicularly, but during a calm in circles, and with rapidly beating wings pours out his loud, joyous song until he sometimes reaches an altitude of a thousand feet or more. Some people say that the bird soars until it becomes invisible, but I have never in all my life heard a Skylark when I could not see it. However, it is only right to confess that I am gifted with abnormally strong eyesight. He continues to sing upon his descent, but in a somewhat altered tone, until approaching the ground, when his carol suddenly ceases, and with closed wings he drops like a stone to the earth.