The bird is a most persistent
and vociferous songster, and fully as successful a mimic as the
mockingbird. It pours out a strain that is a regular mosaic of
nearly all the bird-notes to be heard, its own proper lark song
forming a kind of bordering for the whole. The notes of the phoebe-
bird, the purple finch, the swallow, the yellowbird, the kingbird,
the robin, and others, are rendered with perfect distinctness and
accuracy, but not a word of the bobolink's, though the lark must
have heard its song every day for four successive summers. It was
the one conspicuous note in the fields around that the lark made no
attempt to plagiarize. He could not steal the bobolink's thunder.
The lark is a more marvelous songster than the bobolink only on
account of his soaring flight and the sustained copiousness of his
song. His note is rasping and harsh, in point of melody, when
compared with the bobolink's. When caged and near at hand, the
lark's song is positively disagreeable, it is so loud and full of
sharp, aspirated sounds. But high in air above the broad downs,
poured out without interruption for many minutes together, it is
very agreeable.
The bird among us that is usually called a lark, namely, the
meadowlark, but which our later classifiers say is no lark at all,
has nearly the same quality of voice as the English skylark,--loud,
piercing, z-z-ing; and during the mating season it frequently
indulges while on the wing in a brief song that is quite lark-like.
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