Meadowlark is the small prairie bird who acts as Coyote's informant, disclosing to him news he could not otherwise learn, including word of his wife on the journey to the land of the dead. In a widely told incident Coyote, hurrying past, breaks the bird's leg; repenting, he mends it with a splint, and the meadowlark's slender legs and dark breast-markings are traced to this repair. Her disclosures are as apt to further Coyote's schemes as to expose them.