Habitat selection by Skylarks Alauda arvensis wintering in Britain in 1997/98

Abstract

The results of a national survey of wintering Skylarks Alauda arvensis undertaken by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) between November 1997 and February 1998 are reported here. Over three visits, volunteers counted Skylarks and mapped habitats in 541 1-km squares selected from the Skylark's winter range based on BTO Winter Atlas data and a stratified random sampling approach. Four landscape strata were defined from the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology landscape classification: arable, pastoral, marginal upland and saltmarsh. The survey counts underestimated Skylark abundance, but were good measures of relative abundance across habitat types. The two best predictors of Skylark presence–absence at the landscape scale were the availability of coastal and farmland habitats. Squares with saltmarsh had the highest densities and occupancy (80% of squares). At the patch scale crop stubbles, especially weedy cereal stubbles, were used significantly more than expected by chance. Oilseed rape was positively selected whereas cereal crops were used in proportion to availability and grazed grass was avoided. Skylarks avoided fields smaller than 2.5 ha and selected fields larger than 7.5 ha. We estimate that in midwinter there may be less than 1–2 ha of weedy cereal stubble per 1-km square. We recommend the retention of over-winter stubbles for the conservation of Skylarks and other farmland birds, and research on stubble management and effects on grain availability and arable weed regeneration on Skylark use.