But whatever the pleasure given to dwellers in towns by
listening to their song, it cannot be deemed otherwise than cruel to keep larks in cages, especially in the wretched little boxes to which the fashion of birdsellers condemns them. The skylark is a singer by nature, and is perhaps one of the most joyous and irrepressibly happy of all birds, until the winter of its discontent sets in with the frost, when its nature changes entirely, and its ecstatic soaring flight and song are exchanged for a low and hungry " trek " from stubble to stubble, and a piping and complaining cry. Even so, the larks will continue to soar and sing, whehever the weather is bright and genial, far into the early winter; and on some excep- tionally warm days during last November, when a vast area of late charlock was still in flower and scenting the air, the foreign larks, fresh arrivals on migration from the North,
were soaring and singing in hundreds. In spring nothing seems to deter them from their aerial climb, and they are by no means averse to nesting, soaring, and singing even among the bricks and mortar of groat cities. Wherever there are portions of waste ground covered with grass among the London suburbs, the larks nest and soar and sing as gaily as over the primeval ,turf of Salisbury Plain or the Great White Horse.
For its music alone the song of the lark is almost the most melodious of any bird's. The tone and quality are admirable, and the volume of sound astonishing. It can be heard clearly when the lark has mounted, as it sometimes does, beyond recognition by normal eyesight. The volume of sound is also most noticeable when a caged lark is heard, singing as it does far nearer to the hearer than the bird in the sky. But apart from the quality and music of the song, the circumstances in which it is uttered render it an astonishing feat. Every other considerable songster is quite aware that singing entails much physical effort. Con- sequently it takes care to secure a good platform to sing from. A thrush or a blackbird or a robin nearly always selects a top shoot, or projecting bough, preferably a dead one, on which it sits and sings, never moving its position, and without any objects round it to hinder the "carry" of its voice. The blackcap and nightingale, and some of the warblers, sit in a bush to sing; but the whitethroat, and even the hedge-sparrow, choose the topmost twig. The whitethroat sometimes sings when descending, and some of the pipits and the woodlark do the same, the meadow-pipit singing a feeble little song as it makes a short ascent and descent. But to the strain on its lungs of long-protracted song the lark adds the great muscular exertion of a steady upward flight, usually carried out, not by scaling the air in gentle circles, as in the soaring of the larger birds, but by a vertical climb made by the incessant beating of its wings. Wordsworth's recognition of it as the—
"Type of the wise who soar, but never roam
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home !"— is often almost literally correct. After two or three spirals, the bird goes up almost as if it were drawn heavenwards by a cord, and then, closing its wings, descends like a falling stone to the very point from which it rose. The strain upon the muscles and the lungs would be great if during all this time it were silent. But it chooses to add to the exer- tion of soaring that of pouring forth a continuous flood of sweet notes, with no intermissions or breaks whatever. A lark will soar and sing during a space of ten minutes con- secutively. The rapidity with which the pectoral muscles are working during this period may be judged from the fact that the bird makes not less than from five to six beats of the wing per second. The beats are usually in sets of from three to five, the bird pausing for a moment as if to take a fresh start after the interval. When chased by the merlin falcon, sky- larks make their finest exhibitions of flight, ascending into the air to heights which have been estimated as being not less than a thousand feet. Sometimes the bird uses the same means of ascent as when it is soaring and singing, rising vertically by incessant beats of the wing. In the language of the falconer, these are termed " mounting" larks, and their object is to outfly the hawk directly, shaking off its pursuit during the ascent. Others prefer to rise by flying in a spiral, which the falcon imitates. Mr. E. B. Michell in his volume on "The Art and Practice of Hawking" says The one bird may be circling from right to left and the other from left to right, and neither seems to guide the direction of its rings by any reference to those which the other is making. It is now a struggle to see which can get up fastest, and it is astonishing to see to what a height such flights will sometimes reach. As soon as a lark is eight hundred feet high it can drop, almost like a stone, into any cover within a radius of two hundred yards from the spot just under it, allowance being made for the effect of wind. But eight hundred feet is not high for a ringing flight, at least there is nothing unusual about it. A lark does not go out of sight till he is much above that height, and it is no extraordinary thing for it to do this." The lark seldom sings late in the day. It can be tempted to rise in a burst of melody for one final ascent if the evening sun breaks through the clouds after rain. But as a rule it is silent long before the sun has descended into the Western
And singing startle the dull night"-
are not easily found, though in the height of the pairing- time it may very possibly be beforehand with Aurora in greeting its mate. But as a rule the lark sings at sunrise, as the ortolan eats. Darkness depresses it and keeps it mute, but a gleam of sun is the signal for it to ascend. Obviously rain would make it most difficult for it to soar, both by adding to the weight of its body from the moisture caught in the feathers, and by wetting the webs of the pinions, so the lark only soars in the dry as a rule. It is one of the most sensitive and best of Nature's weather-gages, for when the larks begin to sing it is almost certain that rain has ceased for some time, if not for the day. It is the cock lark which sings. William Cobbett noted that one was just soaring and beginning to sing when the hen flew up, and evidently told him to stop, for she fete-lied him down again,— " an instance," says Cobbett, "of that petticoat government" which is universal.
Skylarks are rather prolific birds, having two broods in the year, and often laying as many as five eggs, though four is the usual number. The nest is so difficult to find that it is practically never discovered except by accident, as when, for instance, the hayfields are mown, or wheat is being hoed. The bird very seldom nests near to the margin of a field, where it might be put off its nest by passers-by. On the shores of the North Sea skylarks will nest in the " bents " and " marram " close to the edge of the sandhills, though they have to fetch food to their young from a considerable distance. There is always something very pleasing in the sight of a lark's nest. It is usually sunk in a hollow, and unlike the nests of many ground-building birds, is most care- fully made, the cup being deep and perfectly circular, and lined with very fine grasses, though the outer part is made of rough, dead bents, and often of a most irregular shape, in order to fill up the hole in which it is made.
In winter the rain-soaked fields of England, and the great area of young corn, to the blades of which larks are very partial, attract enormous numbers of these birds from the North of Europe. The numbers of migratory larks reported from the East Coast lighthouses exceed those of any other species. They have not only the taste, but even the smell, of game-birds, for young dogs always incline to point them. They have been eaten from time immemorial by Englishmen, who, unlike Continentals, eat no other small birds. The French naturalist's note that "this exquisite songster is delicious on toast" may be paralleled from an English book called "Hunger's Prevention ; or, The Art of Fowling," published in 1621, the author of which gives details of ain ingenious device, still used on the Continent, for decoying larks by means of revolving mirrors. It is on record that fifteen thousand larks were caught in one night upon Heligoland. English bird- lovers may console themselves with the knowledge that the larks eaten are mainly foreign immigrants. It is said, though there seems little evidence in support of the statement, that skylarks are decreasing in England owing to the proportionate increase of the starlings, which are believed, when running over the grass-lands in search of food, to suck the larks' eggs. The starling, which was a ram bird in Northumberland in Bewick's day, has certainly increased; but it would be difficult to show that the skylarks are less numerous than formerly. What does greatly diminish their numbers is a very hard winter in England and Ireland, for these islands are their last refuge from the frost. In the winter of 1870, during the siege of Paris, the frost extended even to Devonshire, and there the larks, which had all gone west, were to be seen dead in thousands. They came into the streets of towns and invaded the gardens, where they ate every atom of leaf off the winter cabbages, leaving nothing but the fibres of the leaves. This was not because the bird is dainty in its food, for the name " starvelark " may commonly be found attached to the poorest fields in a parish, which are supposed not to be able even to support a lark. The slang connection of the name with "lurking" generally only belongs to the last century, and is probably due to the North Country, and more especially Yorkshire, verb meaning "to play." To " lake " at cricket is a common phrase, and the term to " lake " is used to mean play in general. It is also employed for any amusement in which work is excluded. A woman applying for parish relief will explain that she has three sons, "one as addles [i.e., earns money] and two as lakes," which may also mean that they are out of work.
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