Bimaculated on Lundy: a new to Great Britain and Ireland By Michael Jones

ON THE AFTERNOON of 7th May 1962 I noticed an unusual bird feeding with a flock of Linnets Carduelis cannabina on Lundy, Devon. It was clearly a lark, but it attracted my attention because of its large size, heavv build and light sandv colour. It was fairly tame and allowed a reasonable view, but I was unable to identify it and so quickly fetched Richard Carden, my assistant warden, for a second opinion. We returned straight away to the spot, but it was by then very misty and raining, with the result that we caught only short glimpses of the bird, usually in flight. However, it stayed in the same area until nth May and during those next four days we spent several hours watching it at close ranges and in both bright and dull lights. Unfortunately, it carefully avoided all attempts to mist-net it, but we kept very full field notes from which the following detailed des­ cription has been compiled:

Upper-parts: crown dark brownish-grey (no crest); nape sandy-brown or pale fawn, unstreaked or very lightly flecked with darker brown; mantle and back sandy, streaked with darker brown; rump sandy or fawn and unmarked; tail like rump at base but shading into golden-brown with a narrow tip of white or whitish (produced by a light spot at the end of each feather). Sides of head: sides of face pale buff with a dark line through the eye and a broad pale supercilium; ear-coverts outlined in dark brownish-grey, this forming a continuation of the eye-stripe (see fig. 1); sides of neck as nape. Wings: coverts sandy with darker brown tips to the lesser and median forming two brown bars; primaries each had one web light and the other dark brown, producing a contrasted longi­ tudinal striping (see fig. 1). XJnder-parts: throat pale; breast pale with a sandy tinge spreading round from the neck; distinct black half-collar in the form of two crescents meeting in a point in the centre, also a roughly circular dark splodge on a sandy area below (see fig. 1 inset); rest of under-parts uniformly Dale buff. Bill stout and yellowish; legs yellow-brown. For the first day or two the bird was always feeding voraciously on short pasture cropped by sheep, often with Turtle Doves Streptopelia turtur, and when disturbed would fly fairly low in a circle and quickly return to the same spot. It was frequently chased by Skylarks arvensis and was easily distinguishable from them, both on the ground

309 BRITISH and in flight and even at a distance with the naked eye, by its larger size, plumper build, much stouter bill and lighter colour. Its tail was also much shorter and broader than a Skylark's and this, combined with its heavy build, gave it a distinctive silhouette in the air. The general impression was of a sandy-brown lark, boldly marked with darker brown stripes on the back and with barring and striping on the closed wing; but the conspicuousness of this pattern varied with the intensity of the light, and in very bright sun the whole bird appeared an almost uniform light sandy-brown. The very short tail combined with the prominent black marks on the upper breast and the heavy bill made us think that the bird must be a calandra, but several characters seemed wrong. In particular, the black collar, perhaps the most prominent single feature, was continuous round the front half of the neck and, when the bird stood erect, a front view showed that it consisted of two crescents joining below the throat rather than a uniformly broad band.

FIG. I. Diagrammatic sketches of Melanocorypha bimaculata, Lundy, Devon, 7th-ntb May 1962, to show the prominent markings on head and wing and {inset) the shape of the black collar and the dark splodge below it {drawn by Michael Jones)

310 BIMACULATED LARK ON LUNDY

At the same time, we could see no sign of white at the sides of the tail, though the whitish tip was very noticeable in flight, and there was no white trailing edge to the wing. The lark was always on the ground and was never seen to perch on walls or bushes, although these were at hand. It flew very little and never very high or far and it always started feeding again as soon as it had landed. Worms were the only food it was seen to eat. It walked with a rather bold and rolling swagger which was reminiscent of a Star­ ling Sturnus vulgaris, but was never observed to hop. It was once seen to take a dust-bath. It often crouched and at first it uttered most of the song or sub-song that we heard from this position. Whenever we flushed it, it uttered short calls not unlike those of a Skylark but more mellow and subdued—generally prrp or chirrp but occasionally prrp-cheewit-chewit. By the third day it had begun to sing regularly, particularly when it was startled, and it then did so both from the ground and in flight. The song was a rather chirpy trill with more of a rattle than a Skylark's and rising and falling very little. It seemed abrupt, monotonous and subdued, each phrase disjointed and as though squeezed out with an effort, which may have meant that it was still not the full song. Individual sounds we noted in the song were written as prrp, cheewit, che-wit-che and chirp.

Although the bird was on the island for a total of five days, it was seen only by Richard Carden and myself because no other ornitholo­ gists were present. Neither of us had any experience of the Calandra Lark and so, in spite of the discrepancies in the description, we con­ cluded that this was what it must be. However, when the details were submitted to the Rarities Committee, they had no hesitation in identifying it as a Bimaculated Lark M. bimaculata, an eastern species of the same genus as the Calandra which had not previously been recorded in Britain. Our thanks are particularly due to Kenneth Williamson who kindly made a detailed comparison of our notes with museum specimens of the Bimaculated Lark and all other possible species of Melanocorypha.

[This most interesting record illustrates the importance of writing down what one sees and not, after looking at books, what one thinks one ought to have seen. The observers are to be congratulated on producing such a careful description of the bird that they observed, even though some of the details seemed 'wrong' at the time. According to C. Vaurie (1959, The Birds of the Palearctic Fauna, 1:35), the Bimaculated Lark, or Eastern Calandra Lark, breeds in 'Western Asia from Asia Minor and Near East to northeastern Afghanistan, north to southern Urals, Kirghiz Steppes east to Zaisan Nor. Mig-

311 BRITISH BIRDS grates to Egypt, Sudan, Arabia, Ethiopia, and northwestern India (Punjab and Sind). Habitat same as M. calandra but often on more barren soil and higher regions to about 2700 metres.' The western race rufescens, found in Asia Minor, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, is much more rufous above and buffer below than the Lundy description. There is only one previous west European record of the species and that was in Finland on 13th January i960 (Orn. Venn., 37:100). Apart from the continuous pectoral band of black with a brownish area below (the two dark crescents may or may not meet in the middle like this) and apart from the lack of white in the outer tail and on the rear edges of the wing, all of which the observers particularly noted as apparent discrepancies, there are several other features in their des­ cription which show that this bird was a Bimaculated Lark and not a Calandra. These include the very sandy colour; the whitish spot at the tip of each tail feather, giving the appearance of a white band in the spread tail; the uniform-looking nape and rump and the brighter, more golden-brown tail; the appearance of a double wing-bar; the broad, pale supercilium separating the darker crown and dark eye-stripe; and the dark brown 'outline' to the ear coverts.—EDS.]

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