SKYLARK (Alauda arvensis) - Alouette des champs
Summary
A bird of the open field and agricultural areas, plus the few areas of natural grassland. It can hover for remarkable long periods singing an almost continuous stream of song:
Most people probably hear more than they see the Skylark. On the ground its brown plumage blends with the background, and in the air (where it sings) it soars to great height until it is a tiny dot which pours its liquid song down to the ground below. It is a very evocative sound which inspired many a poet and in 1820 Shelley wrote the famous "To a Skylark" the first two verses of which describe the song and behaviour well, listen as you read it:
“….soaring ever singest” © Arlette Berlie
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
Skylarks evolved to live in open grassland (although now use our artificial version which we call farmland). There being no trees to sit in and sing, yet still needing to broadcast its song, the Sklyark developed an almost vertical song flight where it rises to great height and hovers there high over its territory for up to 15 mins singing its heart out. As you can hear the song simply sounds like a continuous stream of sound because of its rapidity. Studies have shown that the notes can be delivered at a rate of 43 Hz (43 per second) and call phrases at 10 Hz. The current theory is that the bird rapidly fills its lungs between each note and is exhaling to make each sound - quite a feat when you are also flying !!
The complexity of all this can be appreciated if we look at a 6 second sequence:
and is even more impressive if we slow it down to one-fifth the normal speed and then you can follow the pattern with your eyes (NB: in slowing down the speed the pitch of the song is lowered by the same amount and so sounds quite strange - but try to ignore that and just look at the pattern):
Skylark one-fifth normal speed
Skylark studies © Frank Jarvis
But if you listen carefully the sound is not completely random and does have repetitions and patterns in it - listen to this one:
and see the repetition in the middle section of the song:
I once had an interesting incident which demonstrated the determination to sing that this species has. One day I was recording in the Camargue and had focussed on a Skylark singing away on quite a windy day, suddenly it was set upon by a Hobby which dived down on it like a rocket. The Skylark lost its step in its song, and uttered a couple of phrases as it too tumbled down into dense vegetation immediately in front of me to avoid being eaten, but then let go a couple more defiant burst of irritation from the protection of a small bush, you can hear this incident starting with the attack at about 7s into this next file and the two angry bursts at 14s and 16s:
© Arlette Berlie
In Switzerland it is found up to about 2,400m in summer, but in winter is mostly in the low valleys no higher than 600m. It is generally in decline in Europe due to changes in farming practices where many cereals are now planted in winter which then makes agricultural land less suitable for them in the breeding season as the crops are then mature and cover the ground too densely. But is still quite common in the agricultural plains of the north and west of Switzerland.
