The Calandra lark: description, food, reproduction

The Calandra lark (Jurby) – a small bird, which is a wonderful singer. They are in most cases painted in shale grey dull tone. Birds are widely distributed, mostly inhabiting the open spaces: steppes and meadows, treeless slopes and semi-desert hills and mountains. They very rarely sit on the branches of shrubs and trees. The basis of their diet are in summer mainly prozrenie seeds of various herbaceous plants and insects. In winter they feed on seeds.

Field signs

The Calandra lark – large, the size of a Starling bird. Her figure is massive, chunky. Outfit “Skylark” on each side of the craw has large black spot, sometimes they merge. The bottom bird laboratoty, white. Wings are broad with a dark red lining, with the rear edge with a light border during takeoff is especially noticeable. The beak is bright, thick.

It is Found in fields and steppes. Sometimes sings, sitting on a Bush or on the ground, but mostly – flying at a height of 10 meters, gradually climbs upwards, describing the arc. The song is sonorous and complex. It is heard resounding “CRR”, as well as whistling, clear “Clery”. He mimics the voices of some other birds: rustic swallow, others lark, Linnet, reed Warbler-nests, whistling gopher, herbalist, and various other sounds.

Painting

The Calandra lark has a basic coloring of brownish-gray tint. The rear of the neck, shoulders and upper back have feathers with dark streaks and bright Buffy edges of feathers.

Dark cores in the uppertail is very mild. Small wing coverts grayish-brown, medium, and large – dark brown, in young plumage buff or pale rufous edges. The ends of the secondary flight feathers with pale, almost white spots. The extreme tail feathers are white with the inner bases of the webs of brown; the edge of the second pair with white wide edges, all the other – with small white spots; all middle pairs brown, monochrome.

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The underparts are white birds. The side of the head grayish-brown shades; above the eyes a white supercilium. Big black spot on the sides of the goiter. The main part of the chest and the goiter are dark-brown, and grayish mottles. Grey sides, like underwings, only the last has a white border. Light brown eyes are. Legs and beak pale brown.

Habitat

The Calandra lark herbivorous dwells, as the name implies, on the open steppe spaces of a well-developed herbaceous cover.

Birds live in the following countries: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Georgia, Jordan, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, Portugal, Palestine, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Syria, Tunisia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Croatia, France, Montenegro.

Food

Like all other larks in summer, the Calandra lark feeds almost exclusively on animal food. He feeds, quickly running along the ground and pecking away at everything that he finds on the grass and the ground. Sometimes he takes wing and looks over the tops of all the bushes. His large beak is often tightly plastered with mud. This is due to the fact that he produces from the soil of small insect larvae. Beak it can also penetrate the icy crust of snow, while from under it to get grass seeds.

The Calandra lark omnivorous. It eats large insects – copra, sharanevych, ballads, etc. From other insects most prefer the darkling beetles, weevils, grains, beetles, alenko, grain beetles, as well as riders, flies, bees, wasps, ants and others. In addition, spiders – it is also a favorite treat of the birds of the steppe lark. The power of it, as we have seen, quite diverse. He eats more than the rest of Orthoptera, because their composition is more diverse. At the same time eats little bugs, scarabs, beetles, caterpillars and ants.

Reproduction

Current flight and singing lasts from March to mid-July. While the first nest was marked under the Zhdanov Borovikov in late March. Masonry also meet until mid-June.

Like other larks, nest under the grass in the hole, great shades and disguises. It is built of dry leaves and stems of grasses and thin rootlets. As usual, the inner layer includes a thinner material. Occasionally it is in the pile of dry horse manure. In masonry mostly could be 5 eggs, sometimes 6 pieces. Eggs have a greenish or off-white base color with a variety of olive or brownish, slightly blurred spots, which are condensed to the blunt end.

One female incubates the eggs for sixteen days. While feeding in the nest lasts about ten days.

Just Left the nest occur from mid-may until July, when it appears nomadic decent packwhich feed on enviam, the steppes, the roads and meadows with the rest of them. At the end of summer meet huge flocks of birds – from 200 individuals. Migration thus continues until late autumn. Often they are formed in autumn and a real flight. Such migratory flocks can be seen on the South of the area. Nomadic flocks in the fall is very noisy. While early birds in fine weather sing and soar, as in spring, with the song.

Molt

In adults, larks, like the rest, molt occurs only once a year, approximately in August. Juveniles have underdeveloped down cover, which in the nest is replaced with the first feathers replaced in turn by the fall of the first "grown up", serious outfit.

Population

The Calandra lark – “landscape” a massive bird. He settles on a distance of a hundred meters of the pairs, with no more than 2 pairs on 1 hectare of land.