Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/91

 power of imitating the notes of other birds, introducing them into his own melody. Like our lark, he sings as he soars up to the sky, or when perched on a stone or stump of a tree. The Chinese call him bai-ling, and delight in his song, often keeping him as a cage-bird.

Like the sand-grouse, the Mongol lark visits the north, and breeds in Trans-Baikalia, although it prefers remaining in Mongolia, where it makes its nest on the ground like the European species, depositing three or four eggs in a little hole. In the desert of Mongolia, where the cold weather lasts all the spring, these larks form their nests late in the year, and we found their fresh-laid eggs in the beginning, and even the end, of June. Wintering in those parts of the Gobi where little, if any, snow falls, they withstand the severest cold (as much as -34° Fahr.), finding shelter in the tufts of dirisun, the small seeds of which are at this season their chief food. This, and similar observations we have made, lead to the opinion that many of the feathered tribe are driven southwards in winter by want of food, and not by cold.

The Mongol lark is found as far south as the northern bend of the Yellow River, and then avoiding Ordos, Ala-shan, and the mountains of Kan-su, it re-appears in the steppe near Lake Koko-nor. Two other kinds of larks also winter in the Gobi in very large numbers (Otocoris albigula, Alauda pispoletta), and the Lapland ortolan (Plectrophanes