Skylark’s Song Is Strongly Criticised.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19268, 3 January 1931, Page 8

Skylark’s Song Is Strongly Criticised.

Nature Notes

By

James Drummond,

F.L.S., F.Z.S.

T HE SK\ LARK in New Zealand is the same blythe spirit that poured out the fulness of its joy into Shelley's ears in English fields and meadows. In New Zealand, as in England, it showers a rain of melody in profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Even in many parts of this city, where the population is not very close, residents who, these summer mornings, get up with the lark before sun-

rise hear the debonair “ embodiment of joy” singing the old songs heard in England now, and in Merrie England in ancient times. For all this, complaints are occasionally that the skylark, after having been naturalised in New Zealand for some sixtyfive years, is losing some of the quality of its song. Another complaint is that it does not soar as much as formerly, and now seldom claps its wings at heaven’s gate. A North Island resident, riding over plains, years ago, was entranced by skylarks singing overhead for miles, some soaring, some apparently high up out of sight, some darting back to earth.

“You may hear a skylark now trying to sing the song skylarks used to sing,”* he states, “but it is almost sure to be sitting on a post. It does not soar straight up, but rises on a lazy angle to a height of thirty or forty feet, utters a few half-heart-ed notes, does not start down again as a f rue skylark should, but seems to steady itself for a few seconds, and finally decides to descend as lazily as it went up." More solid is the bitter complaint of farmers that the skylark is a nuisance in wheat fields and gardens, ranking in destructiveness next to the sparrow, for which reasons farmers give it no peace.