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Only the nightingale rivals the skylark’s reputation as one of the finest songsters in the bird world. The skylark’s song is fast, complex and highly variable, but (unlike the nightingale’s) it is delivered within a narrow frequency range. There can be anything from 160 to over 460 syllables in the song.
The Victorians also liked to keep male larks as songbirds, as a good singer would fetch as much as 15 shillings.
The skylark is one of the most widely distributed of all British birds, found from coastal dunes to the tops of the Cairngorms.
The declines of the skylark in Britain is attributed to the switch from spring to autumn sowing of cereals and the resulting loss of winter stubbles.
The Faeroe Islands have Europe’s smallest skylark population- just 10 pairs- while Poland has the largest, an estimated 5 to 9 million pairs. Britain still has around 1 million.
