THE MEADOWLARK
by
Walter L. Meagher
Photos by Wayne Colony
Eastern and Western species are barely
distinguishable: both have the same markings, the same behavior,
and the same call and song. A black V is set above a bright
orange-yellow belly. In El Charco, a meadowlark flies low over the
weedy field that the presa has become by April and May: the bird
turns abruptly and lands. This maneuver is a common trait of the
two species. Having landed, the male conceals his bright breast,
his back becomes brown grass, nearly invisible on the clay-grey
earth.
Meadowlarks belong to a family of birds called Icterids. Of these, the grackles, cowbirds and red-winged blackbirds are intensely colonial; the meadowlark is not. Whether the species threw over the conventual life or whether they never adopted it, I cannot say. ‘Meadow’ and ‘lark’ are beautiful words, they exalt their bearer; the meadowlark is the state bird of Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming. There are few meadows in the New World, but there are prairies where, in coarse grass and weedy fields, the bird’s nest is a wickiup of vegetation bent and shaped to suit its tenant.
Adapted from Wild & Wonderful: Nature Up Close in El Charco del Ingenio, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato.