Skylark ascending

10 Feb 2014 Skylark by Will Bown Between the bouts of extremely windy, wet weather, it has been a relatively warm winter so far. Having been lying low for most of January, Skylarks seem to be taking advantage of these mild conditions. The reporting rate shows a sharp increase in detectability in the last week of January, likely to have been caused by the onset of birds singing. The historical average indicates that this usually happens a week later. Interestingly the reporting rate for Skylark was below average for the rest of January. Skylarks often move around in response to hard weather in the early part of the year. It's plausible that the lack of any significant period of freezing weather for most of Britain and Ireland to date in 2014 – coupled with the strong winds and heavy rain – resulted in Skylarks keeping their heads down more than is normal for the first few weeks of the year.

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