PHOTO: Jim Stasz
PHOTO: robert shupak
From the top: A meadowlark surveys its kingdom; horned larks are fond of winter’ s cornfield stubble; a typical view of an upland sandpiper is a long neck sticking up above tall grass.
Three grassland birds in particular divvy up the Reserve’ s grassland habitat, each according to its own needs— from bare soil to short grass to tall meadows.
If there is a poster child for the Reserve’ s grassland birds, it is the brightly colored and melodious songster, Eastern meadowlark. In spring, the chunky, robin-sized
male meadowlark pours forth a loud, plaintive fluting from fenceposts and telephone wires. His distinctive golden chest with a broad black V makes him easy to spot when he’ s singing.
The female is similarly marked but seldom makes such a show of herself, preferring to remain concealed in the grass and weeds where meadowlarks find insects, other invertebrates, and seeds to eat. Even though they are yearround residents of the Reserve, meadowlarks go mostly unremarked except when the males are singing in the springtime. The males fall silent after the nesting season ends.
The female meadowlark takes special care to conceal her cupshaped nest of grass and fibers in a depression like a cattle hoofprint, and sometimes even builds a woven dome over it. She may also construct a runway of sorts that she can dash through when disturbed on the nest before bursting out of the vegetation some feet away, distracting would-be predators from her clutch. She’ ll lay up to seven eggs that she alone incubates and cares for, and if the pasture or hayfield isn’ t mown may produce a second brood later in the season.
A similar, black-and-yellow grassland bird found year-round in the Reserve is North America’ s only native lark, the horned lark. Look for horned larks on the bare ground of cornfields and pastures with exposed soil, or on snow-covered fields of stubble, where they find their preferred food of seeds and insects. The barer the soil, the more horned larks like it.
In winter, horned larks are of-
PHOTO: mike allen
An Eastern meadowlark nest.
ten seen at the edges of roads after snowfall, where they forage on the bare shoulders cleared by snowplows. They’ re smaller than meadowlarks, more slender, plainer, and longer-tailed.
The common name comes from black feathers on the male’ s head that sometimes stick up like horns. The lark’ s face is yellowish with a bold, black mask stretching from the bill and past the eyes; the throat is bright yellow over a thin black breast band. The rest of the bird is a grayish brown that blends in remarkably with bare ground even when they are standing in plain sight. Females and winter males have the same pattern but are less colorful. When horned larks fly, their black tails stand out against a pale back.
Larks are well-known acrobatic songsters. The common song is a high-pitched, weak tinkling, given by the male as he flies high above his territory. Gathered in winter flocks, however, horned larks call to each other with short, lisping tsseeets, often as the flock rises in a characteristic twisty flight over the fields.
After mating, the female selects a nest site, often a shallow depression that she spends a day or two deepening and widen-
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