Skylark

Alauda arvensis

A common Lark over most of Europe and Asia except the tropics. A chunky brown-streaked bird with long claws which basically lives on seeds and invertebrates in open ground.

The most memorable thing about the Skylark is its fantastic song given in a long song- flight (no song perches in open country). The varied song phrases seem to spring continuously from the bird and often many individuals are within earshot at once.

There are many races with different shades of colour and rather different sizes. Northern birds are migrants but southern are sedentary. Populations on agricultural land are threatened by intensive farming and have declined by 3,000,000 breeding birds in Britain over the last 25 years. There are still about 2,000,000 breeding pairs in Britain and over 500,000 in Ireland.

A common House Sparrow-sized lark of the Old World.

Length	185 mm
Closed wing	110 mm
Weight	40 gms

A Bird On! Sketch by Chris Mead
Copyright © 1996 by Jacobi Jayne & Company and Chris Mead