Breeding Skylarks in Britain

In 1997 the BTO undertook a national survey of breeding Skylarks in Britain in 1997 in which numbers of Skylarks and land use types were recorded by volunteers in 608 1-km squares.

The results suggest a maximum national population of c. 1,000,000 pairs. This agrees extremely well with the national population estimate of c.1,046,000 pairs derived from the BTO/Joint Nature Conservation Committee/ Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) and provides further evidence for the robustness of the BBS as a national monitoring scheme for common and widespread species. The figure is approximately half that of the most recent published estimate of 2,000,000 in 1988-91.

However, the scale of this discrepancy is likely to reflect a bias in Atlas field methodology and site selection since there has been a real decline of approximately 9% since 1990.

Arable squares supported the highest densities of Skylarks; 4.6-6.0 pairs per km² and 46-49% of the British breeding population was associated with arable areas. Marginal upland and upland areas supported lower densities but still accounted for approximately 34% of the estimated national breeding population. Differences in density at broad habitat scales were reflected in geographical differences across Britain, with southern and eastern arable regions supporting much higher densities than western and northern ones.

At a finer scale, Skylarks occurred at highest densities on, and showed highest habitat preferences for, set-aside and various types of ungrazed grassland. Winter cereal, improved grassland and set-aside held the highest proportion of the Skylark population on farmland in England and Wales, grazed pasture, winter cereals and spring cereals held the highest proportion in Scotland.

A paper detailing the full results of this survey has been accepted for publication in "Bird Study".

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