The birds are dun-colored and agile, with yellow throats and faces, and tiny black “horns” of feathers. A birder’s attention often is drawn to a musical two-noted peep before seeing them scurry along the ground, in small flocks of other larks, or sometimes pipits. They dine on seeds and arthropods. They seem to have affinity for the same fields – I see them in exactly the same spots year after year.
Horned Larks are also among the earliest nesters. T. S. Roberts took an avid interest in the species as a teenager. He located nests on the oak savannah in what is now south Minneapolis and noted that in some years, the birds nested so early that sometimes the eggs froze. The observant teen watched the birds throw out the frozen eggs and start over—only to have those eggs frozen, too. Roberts includes a record from Isanti County of March 31, 1918 with chicks just hatched, recorded by Lawrence Lofstrom of Cambridge.
Larks are widely distributed in North America, and can be found throughout Minnesota except in heavily forested areas. In Chisago County, and elsewhere, they nest in farm fields. I hear larks singing from soybean fields in June, the first places they appeared in February. In the 21stcentury, this predilection for cropland takes on new significance, when one considers the drenching of “Round-up Ready” crops in pesticide.
Because of land-use changes in the twentieth century, Horned Larks are not as common as in Roberts’ boyhood, when he recorded encountering “ a great many.” Still, they are not uncommon birds, and provide, at least at present, a welcome early sign of spring when it seems we are still in winter’s grasp.
Recently, a prehistoric Horned Lark was found in northeastern Siberia. The nearly perfect ancient bird was discovered by fossil ivory hunters, who handed it over to the Swedish Museum of Natural History for testing. Genetic testing revealed that it was, indeed, a Horned Lark, Eremophila alpestris, and thought to be ancestral to two Asian subspecies of Horned Larks. It was deemed 46,000 years old, a true Ice Age bird.
To read more about the Ice Age Horned Lark, click here:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/21/europe/frozen-bird-ice-age-scli-intl-scn/index.html
To learn more about lark natural history, go to the Cornell Lab website: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Horned_Lark/overview
And to see where larks occur in Minnesota, go to the MN Breeding Bird Atlas: https://mnbirdatlas.org/species/horned-lark/
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