Poetic herald of the new season
The merest glint of spring sunshine is enough to encourage the skylark to ascend over fields or pastures and pour forth its effervescent song.
Hovering high above our sight in the sky, the lark’s bubbling chimes bid farewell to winter and celebrate the new season of blossom and hope.
Such joyful song has seen the bird immortalised in poetry more than any other.
To Percy Bysshe Shelley, the lark’s blithe spirit and sweet refrains were heaven-sent.
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Blake also echoed the voice of the lark in their writings – yet you have to hear this nondescript bird first hand to be truly uplifted.
A recent dog walk around the fallow fields near my home was made all the more pleasurable when sunlight peeked through a patch of blue sky.
At once, a dozen or so larks reached for the skies with whirling wings and jubilant voices, elevating my spirits on an otherwise gloomy day.
Wordsworth’s tribute to the lark came to mind.
“Happy, happy liver, with a soul as strong as a mountain river, pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver, joy and jollity be with us both.”
Sadly, skylarks have been dropping in numbers in recent decades. Between 1995 and 2020 numbers declined by 15 per cent.
Although larks still hold as many as 1.6million territories across the country, they are red listed as a UK Bird of Conservation Concern.
The British Trust for Ornithology says there is good evidence to indicate that the most likely cause of the decline is agricultural intensification, specifically the change from spring to autumn sowing of cereals.
This reduces the number of breeding attempts and may also affect overwinter survival due to loss of fields of winter stubble, which are an important source of food for skylarks.