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222 But oh, the meadow larks that nested in that pasture! This little brown-backed, and spotted-yellow-breasted singer, with the necklace of jet and white-tipped tail, is the Jenny Lind of our grasslands. You cannot walk along the edge of a clover field but he may spring up at your feet, perch on a fence or bush, and pour out a melody like flutes and violins, and human voices in vesper hymns. Yet, so few notice the meadow lark that Audubon, our greatest bird student, called him neglecta.

He is not a lark at all, as is the English sky-lark. He is a cousin of the blackbirds, the orioles and bobolinks. He walks like the blackbirds. He comes to us in April and sings all summer long, on the ground, on perches and on the wing. He is one of the very greatest of bird singers, rivalled only by the nightingale, the mocking bird, and the brown and hermit thrushes.

There was rivalry among the children as to who should first spy the tanager in the doctor's garden. A flash of scarlet flame across an open space, and the tanager is gone! This glowing coal of a bird with black velvet wings and tail, really belongs to a tropical family. He seems as strange among our wild birds as an orchid in a meadow. He flits about in silent places, singing a lovely little chant, as sad as the dove's but of varied melody. To his mate he sings a low sweet warble. He calls like a robin, and he "throws" his voice like a ven-tril-o-quist, so you will often think him somewhere else.

The cinnamon-brown, spotted-breasted hermit-thrush of our northern pine woods can "throw" his voice, too. He is as shy as the tanager. Perhaps both of them do that to deceive hawks and squirrels and other enemies as to their whereabouts. The tanager's mate is a dull olive and yellow. Very soon he, too, takes off his scarlet and black