LARKS, TITMICE, HONEY-EATERS, AND THEIR KINDRED.
Confined almost entirely to the Old World, where they are represented by more than one hundred species, many of which have undergone considerable specialisation in the matter of plumage, so as to enable them to live in desert regions, the Larks constitute a well-marked group, into the characters of which we need not enter here.
The best-known member of the group is the Skylark. Common throughout the British Islands, and of sober coloration, no bird is more universally beloved, and this largely on account of the sweetness of its song, which is second only to that of the nightingale. Poets and prose-writers alike have sounded its praises, many in passages that will be remembered as long as our language lasts. The skylark is one of the few birds which sing while on the wing; the peculiar nature of the flight at this time all must have watched, entranced the while by the beauty of the song.
Grahame, in his "Birds of Scotland," happily describes the nest as follows:—
The daisied lea he loves, where tufts of grass
Luxuriant crown the ridge; there, with his mate,
He founds their lowly house, of withered bents,
And coarsest speargrass; next, the inner work
With finer and still finer fibres lays,
Rounding it curious with its speckled breast.