Plate 200 – Shore Lark

On July 25, 1833, John James Audubon and all those aboard Ripley set sail from Labrador’s Great Mécatina Archipelago towards Brador Bay. The Ripley approached the bay under heavy fog the next day. The harbor is situated between the mainland on the east and a flatland of mostly granite rock called Ledges Island (present-day Ȋle du Bassin) to the west. “Once entered, our nostrils were assailed by odours that were anything but agreeable.” The source of those disagreeable odors turned out to be the 100 or so fishing boats that brought into the bay an average of over one hundred thousand pounds of fish per day. “A continued splash was produced by the garbage as it was thrown overboard, and you may judge, if you can, how many thousands of cod and ling have been destroyed, before the whole bottom of this harbor has been paved with their heads.” Once cleaned, the fish were salted for curing and piled into stacks that “stretched along to the view, in as close and regular array as haycocks in a meadow.” After scaling the rocky edges of the bay to reach the tableland surrounding Brador Bay, Audubon was immediately met by the Shore Lark. The common name for the Shore Lark has since been changed to the Horned lark, ostensibly to better reflect the appearance of the bird rather than where it is typically found. In fact, the largest number of Horned larks in North America that has been submitted to Cornell’s eBird system could not have been much farther from a shore. Glen Walbek counted 575,000 Horned larks on the flat cropland and plains of Colorado just east of Denver (see eBird Checklist S33734360) on January 16, 2017.