Woodlarks are back
Late looking for the first Woodlarks this year and only partly successful but the weather turned midday - found two males and a female this morning at one site and then at a second site lots of chasing, fighting and odd behaviour with three birds regularly in the air together which I assumed to be two males and a female. The pair often settled on the ground with the second male either chasing them around or hanging in the air above them looking down before making diving attacks. When the second intruding male flew off the pair settled to feeding and the male took a dust bath in the sand something I had not photographed before.
Intruding male Woodlark looking down at pair on the ground
not easy getting decent flight images that don’t just show the underparts of a singing bird
leafless birch trees as a backdrop and far enough away to not fool the AF system
the defending male on the deck looking out for the intruder
male foreground on bare sand before his dust bath
I rediscovered breeding Woodlarks in Lincolnshire in 1984 after a 24 year absence and worked on them for many years surveying most of the sites in the North of the county for many seasons - you can see some of the flying sand grains around the male’s head here
no he didn’t die on the sand just got into some odd positions
