IdentIfIcatIon and habItat

If it were not for its remarkable song, the skylark is inconspicuous. Both male and female are stout, rather dull birds, between a house sparrow and a starling in size. Their backs, upper-wings and upperparts are a streaky grey-brown. Breasts are buff-coloured with unmarked white bellies. They have distinct pale eye rings and superciliums – a stripe just above the eye – strong bills, and a blunt crest that is raised when they are excited or alarmed. White trailing edges to their wings, and white tail sides are often distinctive as they fly away after being flushed. The tail is usually flared and then lowered as they land again a short way further on, after a brief, slightly ungainly hover. It is in all flight, not just song flight, that the species is easiest recognised. Over short distances, the bird weaves and flutters somewhat erratically. While it is more purposeful over longer distances, there is still a looseness to the rhythm of its wing-flapping, with consequent undulations in its trajectory. Skylarks are found across the UK, in lowland farmland and coastal heaths, moorland and mountains. Firm, level or unobstructed soil, neither arid nor muddy is ideal for them. It should be well covered with grasses, cereals or low green herbage. They are only absent in the Pennines, and Scottish and Welsh mountains in winter. Birds that spend their summers in such regions move down to lower altitude, usually the coast, for the colder months. While there, and on passage back and forth, they form flocks, sometimes of several hundred birds. They feed by walking busily across the ground, pecking energetically at anything that catches their eye. Cereal grain and weed seeds are important food sources in autumn, and grain in winter and spring. Grain and seeds that have become buried just below the surface are dug out. In the breeding season, small insects form an important part of the diet. While remaining numerous, with 1.4 million pairs in Britain in 2009, the population has fallen by as much as two-thirds in 30 years. On intensely cultivated farmland, numbers are down by three-quarters. Increased use of pesticides and weedkillers, a switch away from spring sowing of crops, and the lack of winter stubble, are all driving the decline.