Secret nests

If you walk along a path near to where skylarks are nesting, you might see a flash of white in the wings and the tail as one flies off. 

If you’re lucky, you might even see the smart crest on its head. 

Quite often, a skylark will fly over to the other side of the field before launching itself upwards into the sky. 

This is to trick you into thinking that it is nesting somewhere else, to keep its nest site a secret.

When your parents were children, they probably heard skylarks singing in every field and on every farm in spring. Since 1970, the number of skylarks in the UK has halved and you can’t hear one in every field any more.