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Wintering Skylark Survey

The BTO’s long running monitoring programme, the Common Birds Census, has shown that British breeding populations of Skylarks have decreased by over 50% during the last 25-30 years. Much time and research has been invested to try to discover why this familiar and once common species is now becoming scarce. As a part of this work, the BTO ran a Wintering Skylark Survey during the winter of 1997/98.

Between mid-November 1997 and mid-February 1998 volunteers visited over 500 randomly selected 1 km squares (1km by 1km). On three visits to their square they counted the number of Skylarks seen in each field or area of the square. They also described what habitats were available and the type of land use prevalent in the square.

From this information we were able to assess which types of land use and habitats were preferred or avoided by Skylarks in winter. Skylarks were most abundant in areas of saltmarsh. However, saltmarsh is a very restricted habitat in Britain, so despite containing high densities, it actually supported a low proportion of Britain’s wintering Skylark population. By far the largest proportion of wintering Skylarks was found on farmland.

Within farmland, the most preferred habitats were cereal stubble fields, particularly weedy ones. During winter Skylarks eat a variety of small seeds and leaves of plants. Cereal stubble fields often contain grain missed during the harvest, and the weeds bear seeds that Skylarks will also eat. Such fields therefore present ideal feeding conditions for hungry Skylarks in winter. Information such as this is important because it suggests how farmland can be managed most effectively to benefit declining species like the Skylark. If stubble fields can be retained through the winter these can provide feeding conditions for a wide variety of farmland birds at times when they might otherwise struggle to find food.

More details can be found on page 5 of BTO News issue number 222. The full results of this survey will be published in the journal Bird Study.

This work was funded by a partnership of the British Trust for Ornithology and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (on behalf of English Nature, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Countryside Council for Wales, and also on behalf of the Environment and Heritage Service in Northern Ireland.

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