Skylark Alauda arvensis
The melodic song from this high flyer often means that the skylark is heard before it is seen. When you do spot it, it will be a small bird with a streaky brown back and a buffy-white underside heavily streaked with dark brown, and it can be spotted all year round.
Conservation status in Norfolk
Due to its rapid decline (more than 50% in the last 25 years), the skylark is a species of high conservation concern.
How to help
If you are a farmer or landowner; recent research by the RSPB has shown that leaving small plots (16-24m2) unsown in winter will attract Skylarks to nest on arable land.
John Cley
Information on the Skylark
How to recognise
The skylark is a small bird somewhere between a sparrow and a starling in size. It has a streaky brown back and an underside of buffy-white heavily streaked with dark brown. The tail is brown with white sides and the wings have a white line along the rear edge which can be seen when the bird flies. Skylarks also have a short crest which can only be seen when it is raised – usually when the bird is alarmed or excited. There is no difference between the sexes.
Skylarks are often heard long before they are seen. From late winter to mid summer they sing their distinctive, melodic, seemingly endless song from a great height in the sky.
Where to see
Skylarks like open countryside and can be seen on grazing marshes, coastal dunes and heaths as well as the arable fields and meadows. Good places to see (and hear) skylarks are the nature reserves along the north Norfolk coast such as NWT Cley Marshes and NWT Holme Dunes. In winter small flocks of Skylarks are often found on coastal saltmarshes.
When to see
Skylarks can be seen all year round. In winter they form flocks - often with other species such as meadow pipits.
Did you know?
The skylark's song can last for five minutes or more.
Larks were once a great delicacy and, by the end of the 19th Century, as many as 20,000 – 40,000 larks a day were arriving at the main lark market at Leadenhall in London. Lark-catching was eventually banned in 1931.
Norfolk gamekeepers used to say if larks were flying high early in the morning it would be a fine day.
Related questions
Are magpies killing all the songbirds?
The simple answer is no. Magpies and songbirds have coexisted for many thousands of years and there is absolutely no evidence that widespread declines of any species can be blamed on magpies. It is true that during the breeding season magpies take the eggs and young of small birds as do great-spotted woodpeckers, jays, stoats, hedgehogs and lots of other predators. In fact some songbird species whose nests are attacked by magpies such as greenfinch and goldfinch have increased in numbers and other songbirds, such as skylarks, whose nests are rarely predated by magpies have massively declined.
To demonise magpies and blame them as the main cause of loss of songbirds is simply wrong. More important factors such as food supply and availability of suitable breeding habitat are the real determinants of songbird populations.