Saturday 16 December 2017

Bird of the week - Shore Lark


When I went to see the twites recently there were also a couple of shore larks on the beach.  Last winter there were seven in the same spot but so far this year I don't think anyone has seen more than two.



The shore larks are more wary than the twites and didn't come very close so I only managed these few photos.

Shore larks are occasional winter visitors to the east coast from their breeding range in northern Scandinavia.  Most Scandinavian shore larks overwinter on the shores of the Baltic Sea.


The shore lark must have been a rare British bird 200 years ago as it was not included in Thomas Bewick's A History of British Birds (1797).  It did feature in a supplement published by Thomas Campbell Eyton A History of the Rarer Species of British Birds (1836).  Archibald Thorburn painted a shore lark along with a short-toed lark (L) and a crested lark (R), both of which are rare vagrants in the UK.

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