Woodlark

The woodlark was described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae and given the binomial name Alauda arborea.[2] This binomial name is identical to the Latin name used in 1676 by English ornithologist Francis Willughby in his Ornithologiae libri tres.[3] The woodlark is now placed in the genus Lullula that was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup in 1829.[4] The current genus name is onomatopoeic from French “Lulu”, the name given to the bird by de Buffon. The French name, Alouette lulu, and the scientific name, Lullula arborea, are derived from the sound of its song.[5] The specific arborea is from Latin arbor, arboris, "tree".[6]

Coloured lithograph by Magnus von Wright

This is a 13.5- to 15-cm-long bird, slightly smaller than the skylark[8] being roughly 20% shorter.[9] The woodlark is mainly brown above and pale below, but with a distinctive white superciliar meeting on the nape.[10] It has a crest which is quite small and at most times inconspicuous.[5] In flight it shows a short tail and short broad wings. The tail is tipped with white, but unlike the skylark, the tail sides and the rear edge of the wings are not edged with white.

A songbird, the woodlark has a melodious, warbling song often described onomatopoeically as a lu-lu-lu-[11] or, more precisely, as a "serial lū-lū-lū-lū-lū-", toolooeet toolooeet toolooeet.[8]

Found mainly in Europe, the mountains of northern Africa and western Asia, the woodlark is present across much of its range. In Europe, the bird seems most at home in the sandy heaths of Belgium, where its density was 7.5 pairs per square kilometre (km²) in 1988.[12] In the same year, densities in East Germany ranged from 0.29 to 5.0 pairs per km² and between 0.1 and 0.25 pairs per km² in southern England, with more optimal habitats being more densely populated. However, populations fluctuated across Europe in the 1990s and 2000s and more up-to-date density figures are unavailable. The extent of the woodlark's range is England in the west, parts of northern Egypt to the south, Iran and Turkmenistan to the east and the Scandinavian Peninsula in the north.[8][9][11] Declining populations have resulted in the woodlark's range contracting, for example in Britain it once bred in Wales and central England but is now found only in southern England. Within its range it is mainly resident in the west, with eastern populations migrating south in the winter.

The woodlark's natural habitat is heathland and open spaces sparsely populated with trees.[13] They prefer clearings in pine forests and heathland and like newly planted areas with pine saplings.[5] Experimental work showed that annual ground‐disturbance can increase Woodlark abundance within lowland grass‐heaths.[14] The bird can also be found more rarely in urban areas. For example, in 1950 a pair were recorded on a main road near Putney Heath, London.[5]

Bird in flight at Südheide Nature Park

The male woodlark has a song flight similar to that of the Eurasian skylark but flutters more as he rises and spirals upwards, circling the ground as he sings at a fairly constant height. Both male and female birds will also sing from the ground or a perch.[11] Birds start singing early in the season, usually around February in Britain.

Breeding

Four eggs

The nest is generally made from grass, bracken, roots and moss and constructed in a depression on the ground.[11] Nesting starts early, sometimes with the first eggs laid before end of March. Usually between three and five eggs are laid. The female will incubate the eggs, which are whitish with brown speckles, for 13 to 15 days.[8] Both parents will then feed the young in the nest and the chicks leave the nest after a further 11 to 13 days.[13] Families stay together for the summer and into the autumn. Two, sometimes three broods will be raised each year.

The woodlark is commemorated in the works of two major poets. "The Woodlark", written by Gerard Manley Hopkins, departs from the standard tradition of British nature poetry by trying to transliterate the bird's song into made-up words.[17]

The Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote of the bird's "melting art" in his poem "To the Woodlark".[18] As there are currently no woodlarks in Scotland, and Burns never travelled south of Carlisle, many have speculated that Burns never came in contact with the bird and was in fact writing about the tree pipit, which was commonly referred to as the woodlark in Scotland.[19] The woodlark's song is also thought to be melodious[11] while Burns' poem has an "underlying sense of grief" which may be attributed to the languishing notes at the end of the tree pipit's song.[19][20] However, the woodlark has been spotted in Scotland on occasion[21] and it is possible that Burns was writing about this bird. This is backed up by the entry of a minister from Clinic, Perthshire in the Old Statistical Account, which reads "The notes of the wood-lark are heard, delightful along the banks of the Lunan in spring and autumn; its nocturnal song has a dying cadence peculiarly melodious and has often been mistaken for the song of the Philomel [nightingale]."[19][22]

In Europe in 2004, the breeding population of woodlarks was estimated to number 1.3 million to 3.3 million breeding pairs. Europe accounts for 75-94% of the global population, meaning between 4.15 million and 13.2 million individuals in its world range.[23] Populations of woodlark have fluctuated across Europe, with specific figures available for Britain showing these fluctuations. An estimated 400 breeding pairs were present in England in 1981.[5] A series of systematic national surveys found 241 pairs in 1986, which increased to 1633 pairs in 1997 followed by an 88% increase to 3064 pairs in 2007.[24] The woodlark has been categorised by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as being of least concern, meaning that it is not currently threatened with extinction.[1]