"Alouette" (pronounced [alwɛt]) is a popular Quebecois children's song, commonly thought to be about plucking the feathers from a lark.

Many US Marines and other Allied soldiers learnt the song while serving in France during World War I and took it home with them, passing it on to their children and grandchildren.

[3] The Canadian theory links the song to the North American French fur trade.

The songs of the French fur trade were adapted to accompany the motion of paddles dipped in unison.

In fact, it is likely that the Montreal Agents and Wintering Partners (precursor to the North West Company of fur traders) sought out and preferred to hire voyageurs who liked to sing and were good at it.

French colonists ate horned larks, which they considered a game bird.

"Alouette" has become a symbol of French Canada for the world, an unofficial national song.

Singers will point to or touch the part of their body that corresponds to the word being sung in the song.

Ethnomusicologist Conrad Laforte points out that, in song, the lark (l'alouette) is the bird of the morning, and that it is the first bird to sing in the morning, hence waking up lovers and causing them to part, and waking up others as well, something that is not always appreciated.

The nightingale (rossignol) also carries messages faithfully and dispenses advice, in Latin, no less, a language that lovers understand.

Laforte explains that this alludes to the Middle Ages when only a select few still understood Latin.

[1] And so, as the lark makes lovers part or wakes up the sleepyhead, this would explain why the singer of "Alouette" wants to pluck it in so many ways if he can catch it, for, as Laforte notes, this bird is flighty as well.