Skylark
Alauda arvensis
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Song pouring down out of an empty sky from a bird too high to see.
A streaky sandy-brown ground bird with a short crest it raises when alert, white outer tail feathers and a rather heavy, walking gait. Skylarks live in open country — arable fields, rough grassland, the merse and saltmarsh edges of the Solway — and avoid trees, hedges and gardens entirely. They remain widespread around Dumfries but have declined severely nationally with changes in farming, and are red-listed.
Behaviour
The song flight is one of the great sights and sounds of the British countryside: the male climbs almost vertically, hangs at height for anything up to an hour, singing an unbroken stream of liquid trilling, then parachutes down. Nests are a simple scrape in grass, which makes them very vulnerable to early silage cutting. In winter skylarks gather in loose flocks on stubble and coastal fields.
When to see it
Quick facts
- Family
- Larks (Alaudidae)
- Size
- 18–19 cm · larger than a sparrow
- UK status
- Red-listed
Photo by User:Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons