se,--

"From whispering winds your plaintive notes were drawn."

For the brilliant solo of Colorado's bird is not in the least like the
charming minor chant of our Eastern lark. So powerful that it is heard
at great distances in the clear air, it is still not in the slightest
degree strained or harsh, but is sweet and rich, whether it be close at
one's side in the silence, or shouted from the housetop in the tumult of
a busy street. It has, moreover, the same tender winsomeness that charms
us in our own lark song; something that fills the sympathetic listener
with delight, that satisfies his whole being; a siren strain that he
longs to listen to forever. The whole breadth and grandeur of the great
West is in this song, its freedom, its wildness, the height of its
mountains, the sweep of its rivers, the beauty of its flowers,--all in
the wonderful performance. Even after months of absence, the bare memory
of the song of the mesa will move its lover to an almost painful
yearning. Of him, indeed, Shelley might truthfully say,--

"Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were,
Thou scorner of the ground."

Nor is the variety of the lark song less noteworthy than its quality.
That each bird has a large _repertoire_ I cannot assert, for my
opportunities for study have been too limited; but it is affirmed by
those who know him better, that he has, and I fully believe it.

One thing is certainly true of nearly if not quite all of our native
birds, that no two sing exactly alike, and the close observer soon
learns to distinguish between the robins and the song-sparrows of a
neighborhood, by their notes alone. The Western lark seems even more
than others to individualize his utterances, so that constant surprises
reward the discriminating listener. During two months' bird-study in
that delightful canyon-hidden grove at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain, one
particular bird song was for weeks an unsolved mystery. The strain
consisted of three notes in loud, ringing tones, which syllabled
themselves very plainly in my ear as "Whip-for-her."

This unseemly, and most emphatic, demand came always from a distance,
and apparently from the top of some tall tree, and it proved to be most
tantalizing; for although the first note invariably brought me out,
opera-glass in hand, I was never able to come any nearer to a sight of
the unknown than the swa