Steppe lark: description, nutrition, reproduction

Steppe lark (jurbai) is a small bird that is a wonderful singer. In this case they are in most cases painted in clay-gray dull tones. Birds are widely distributed, mainly inhabiting open spaces: steppes and meadows, treeless slopes and semi-deserts of hills and mountains. They very seldom sit on branches of bushes and trees. The basis of their diet is mainly in the summer, semi-ripe seeds of all kinds of herbaceous plants and insects. In winter they feed on seeds.

Field signs

The steppe lark is a large bird , the size of a starling. The figure is massive, stocky. Attire "lark", on each side of the goiter there is a black large spot, sometimes they are closed. The bottom of the bird is slightly sparse, white. The wings are wide with dark undergrowth, while the rear edge with a light border, during take-off is particularly noticeable. Beak is light, thick.

It occurs in fields and steppes. Sometimes he sings, sitting on a bush or on the ground, but mostly - flying at a height of 10 meters, gently rises upwards, describing the arcs. The song is sonorous and complex. In her you can hear a sonorous "hrrr", as well as a whistling, clear "clergy". He imitates the voices of some other birds: a village swallow, other larks, a hemp, a warbler-badger, a whistle of a ground squirrel, an herbalist, various other sounds.

Coloring

Steppe lark has a basic color of brownish-gray hue. The back of the neck, shoulders and front part of the back have feathers with dark nastvolya and light ocherous edges.

Dark nastvolya in nadhvoste very weakly expressed. Coating small wings grayish-brown color, large and medium - dark brown, in young, with ocherous or pale rusty edges. The tips of the secondary are secondary, with light, almost white spots. Rudder extreme white with internal bases brown; With the edge of the second pair with white wide edges, all others - with white small specks; All middle pairs are brown, single-colored.

The ventral side of the bird is white. The lateral parts of the head are grayish-brown in color; Over his eyes, there is a light eyebrow. On the big black spot on the sides of the goiter. The main part of the chest and goiter with dark brown, and also grayish pestrinami. Gray sides, like the wings, only in the latter there are white fringes. Light-brown iris. Paws and beak are pale brown.

Habitat

Steppe lark, the herbivorous, lives, as is clear from the name, on open steppe spaces on which there is a perfectly developed grassy cover.

Birds live in the following countries: Albania, Azerbaijan, Armenia, 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 the summer, the steppe lark feeds exclusively on animal food. He feeds, running fast on the ground, and also pecking all that he gets on the grass and earth. Sometimes he flies up and inspects the tops of all the bushes. Its large beak is often densely covered with mud. This is because it extracts small insect larvae from the soil. By the beak, he can also pierce the icy crust of snow, while from under it extract the seeds of grass.

Steppe lark is omnivorous. He eats large insects - copras, locusts, medljaks, etc. Of the remaining insects, most preferring darkling beetles, weevils, grain, leaf beetles, deer, grain beetles, as well as riders, flies, bees, wasps, ants and others. In addition, spiders are also the favorite delicacy of a steppe lark bird. Its food, as we see, is very diverse. More than others, he eats orthopterans, since their composition is more diverse. At the same time, there is little to eat bedbugs, lamellas, leaf-eaters, caterpillars and ants.

Reproduction

Current flight and singing last from March to mid-July. At the same time, the first clutches were marked under Zhdanov Borovikov at the end of March. Clutches are also found until mid-June.

Like the other larks, the nest arranges under the bush grass in the hole, excellent shading and masking. It is built from dry leaves of cereals and stems, as well as thin rootlets. As usual, the inner layer includes thinner materials. Periodically, it is located in a pile of horse dry litter. In the masonry, there can be basically 5 eggs, sometimes 6 eggs. Eggs are sufficiently dark, greenish or dirty white with a variety of olive or brownish, slightly blurred spots that are condensed to the blunt end.

One female incubates eggs for sixteen days. In this nourishment lasts about ten days.

The nestlings that have just left their nest meet from the middle of May to July, when nomadic decent flocks already appear, feeding on stubble, steppes, roads and mowing along with the other larks. At the end of summer there are huge flocks of birds - from 200 individuals. Traveling to this continues until late autumn. Often they are formed in the autumn real flight. Similar migratory flocks can be found in the south of the range. Nomadic flocks in the autumn are very noisy. In this case, larks in good weather sing and fly, as in the spring, with a song.

Moulting

In adult larks, like the rest, moulting occurs only once a year, around August. Nestlings have an underdeveloped downy cover, which in the nest is replaced by the first plumage, which in turn is replaced in autumn by the first "adult", a serious attire.

Number of

Steppe lark is a "landscape" mass bird. He settles at a distance of a hundred meters of steam from a pair, with no more than 2 pairs per 1 hectare of land.