the melodious warbling of the skylark

If you have ever stopped to listen to a Lark singing in a clear blue sky and have wondered how a tiny fluttering spec can climb so high on tender wings and yet sing more blissfully than any other, you may be sure that he is showing off before his lady and is using both the powers of his voice and a display of his flying to win her regard and accept his devotion. 

By late spring the Skylarks have finished their main song period.  Where there has been a local fluctuation in their activity, it is usually because patterns of agriculture have changed and where pesticides have been used extensively.  As a professional horticulturist I personally believe that chemicals should be used as a walking stick, not as a crutch.  Skylarks however are of real benefit as they are voracious consumers of insect pests, rising very early in the morning to feed their hungry youngsters.  

Because of their exuberant song they were popular cage birds in Victorian times.  Bob Morris an Englishman who in 1854 emigrated to Australia but sorely missed the melodious warbling of the Skylarks, decided to return to England after two years and procured twelve Larks to take back with him to Australia.  At the end of their long arduous journey by sea, only seven of the birds had survived.  Bob Morris mounted his horse and with his larks rode to the top of a high mountain and liberated them. The wonderful sound of the Skylark is now heard in their adopted country.

For birds that sing when they fly are few, rising, suspended and falling with the sound of his voice loose to the eddies of the wind, before he does his invisible flight. Like a new-born loves the sound of his mother’s heart beat I love the sound of the Skylark flying with song.