The steppe lark (dzhurbai) is a small bird that is a wonderful singer. At the same time, they are in most cases painted in clay-gray dull tones. Birds are widely distributed, mainly inhabiting open places: steppes and meadows, treeless slopes and semi-deserts of hills and mountains. They very rarely sit on the branches of shrubs and trees. The basis of their diet in the summer is mainly half-ripe seeds of various herbaceous plants and insects. In winter, they feed on seeds.
Field signs
The steppe lark is a large starling-sized bird. Her figure is massive, stocky. The outfit is "lark", on each side of the goiter there is a large black spot, sometimes they close. The bottom of the bird is slightly spotted, white. The wings are wide with dark lining, while the trailing edge has a light border, which is especially noticeable during takeoff. The beak is light, thick.
Found in fields and steppes. Sometimes he sings while sitting on a bush or on the ground, but mostly when flying at a height of 10 meters,rises smoothly, describing arcs. The song is loud and complex. A sonorous “chrrr” is heard in it, as well as a whistling, clear “clear”. He imitates the voices of some other birds: barn swallow, other larks, linnet, badger warbler, gopher whistle, herbalist, various other sounds.
Coloring
The steppe lark has a brownish-gray main color. The back of the neck, shoulders and front of the back are feathered with dark stems and light buffy edges.
Dark uppertail hairs are very weakly expressed. The underwing coverts are grayish-brown, the large and medium wings are dark brown, with buffy or pale reddish edges in the young plumage. The ends of the secondaries are with light, almost white spots. Tail feathers are white with brown inner bases; on the edge, the second pair with wide white borders, all others with small white spots; all middle pairs are brown, one-color.
The ventral side of the bird is white. The lateral parts of the head are grayish-brown; above the eyes there is a light eyebrow. On a large black spot on the sides of the goiter. The main part of the chest and goiter with dark brown and grayish streaks. The sides are gray, as are the underwings, only in the latter there are white borders. Light brown rainbow. Paws and beak are pale brown.
Habitat
The herbivorous steppe lark lives, as the name implies, in open steppe spaces with a well-developed grass cover.
Birds live in the followingcountries: 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 summer the steppe lark feeds exclusively on animal food. He feeds by running quickly on the ground, and also pecking at everything that he comes across on grass and earth. Sometimes he flies up and examines the tops of all the bushes. Its large beak is often densely covered with mud. This is due to the fact that it extracts small insect larvae from the soil. With its beak, it can also break through the icy crust of snow, while extracting grass seeds from under it.
The steppe lark is omnivorous. He eats large insects - copra, locust, lingering, etc. Of the other insects, it prefers dark beetles, weevils, caryopses, leaf beetles, deer, bread beetles, as well as riders, flies, bees, wasps, ants and others. In addition, spiders are also a favorite delicacy of the steppe lark bird. His diet, as we see, is very diverse. More than others, he eats orthoptera, since their composition is more diverse. At the same time, it eats little bedbugs, lamellar, leaf beetles, caterpillars and ants.
Reproduction
Currentflight and singing last from March to mid-July. At the same time, the first clutches were noted near Zhdanov by Borovikov at the end of March. Clutches are also found until mid-June.
Like other larks, it nests under a bush of grass in a hole, it perfectly shades and masks. It is built from dry leaves of cereals and stems, as well as thin roots. As usual, the inner layer includes thinner materials. Periodically, it is located in a pile of dry horse droppings. Clutch usually contains 5 eggs, sometimes 6. The eggs are quite dark, greenish or off-white base color with various olive or brownish, slightly blurred spots, which are thickened to a blunt end.
One female incubates eggs for sixteen days. At the same time, feeding in the nest lasts about ten days.
Chicks that have just left the nest are found from mid-May to July, when nomadic decent flocks already appear, feeding on stubble, steppes, roads and mowing along with the rest of the larks. At the end of summer there are huge flocks of birds - from 200 individuals. At the same time, migrations continue until late autumn. Often they add up to an autumn real span. Similar migratory flocks can also be found in the south of the range. Nomadic flocks are very noisy in autumn. At the same time, in good weather, larks sing and take off, as in spring, with a song.
Moulting
In adult larks, like the rest, molting occurs only oncea year around August. The chicks have an underdeveloped down cover, which is replaced by the first plumage in the nest, which in turn is replaced by the first "adult", serious outfit by autumn.
Numbers
The steppe lark is a "landscape" mass bird. He settles at a distance of one hundred meters of a couple from a couple, while not more than 2 couples per 1 hectare of land.
