rack
of the common snowbird; the feet are not placed one in front of the
other, as in the track of the crow or partridge, but side and side.
The sparrows, thrushes, warblers, woodpeckers, buntings, etc., are all
hoppers. On the other hand, all aquatic or semi-aquatic birds are
walkers. The plovers and sandpipers and snips run rapidly. Among the
land-birds, the grouse, pigeons, quails, larks and various blackbirds
walk. The swallows walk, also, whenever they use their feet at all,
but very awkwardly. The larks walk with ease and grace. Note the
meadowlarks strutting about all day in the meadows.

Besides being walkers, the larks, or birds allied to the larks, all
sing upon the wing, usually poised or circling in the air, with a
hovering, tremulous flight. The meadowlark occasionally does this in
the early part of the season. At such times its long-drawn note or
whistle becomes a rich, amorous warble.

The bobolink, also, has both characteristics, and, notwithstanding the
difference of form and build, etc., is very suggestive of the English
skylark, as it figures in the books, and is, no doubt, fully its equal
as a songster.

Of our small wood-birds we have three varieties east of the
Mississippi, closely related to each other, which I have already
spoken of, and which walk, and sing, more or less, on the wing, namely
the two species of water-thrush or wagtails, and the oven-bird or
wood-wagtail. The latter is the most common, and few observers of the
birds can have failed to notice its easy, gliding walk. Its other lark
trait, namely singing in the air, seems not to have been observed by
any other naturalist. Yet it is a well-established characteristic, and
may be verified by any person who will spend a half hour in the woods
where this bird abounds on some June afternoon or evening. I hear it
very frequently after sundown, when the ecstatic singer can hardly be
distinguished against the sky. I know of a high, bald-top mountain
where I have sat late in the afternoon and heard them as often as one
every minute. Sometimes the bird would be far below me, sometimes near
at hand; and very frequently the singer would be hovering a hundred
feet above the summit. He would start from the trees on one side of
the open space, reach his climax in the air, and plunge down on the
other side. His descent after the song is finished is very rapid, and
precisely like that of the titlark when it sweeps down from its course
to alight on