Horned Lark near the Willm's Road Pond

I was on my way to collect some very big rocks today in the Mother Lode foothills when I passed by a familiar bird on a fencepost. It was a beautiful Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris) and unlike all the other birds today it didn't fly off as I drove by. So I got a couple of shots to share with you!

The big rocks, by the way, were VERY big rocks, several tons each, to be deployed at our Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab at Modesto Junior College. The lab will be a microcosm of the Great Valley natural environment. Maybe one day some Horned Larks will be lured into visiting our campus...

Horned Lark on the California Prairie (what's left of it, anyway)

Although I no doubt had seen them, I didn't recognize Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris) until early last year during my travels through the remaining prairies of Central California. At a distance I mistook them for Meadowlarks. I was on a work errand in the Sierra Nevada foothills a few days ago, helping to select rocks (well, really giant boulders) that will become part of our Outdoor Education Laboratory next to our Science Center. I was near Knights Ferry and Willms Road, so I took ten minutes to check out the prairie off to the south. It didn't take long to find a few of the Horned Larks (and some Meadowlarks too).

The birds have declined in the last few decades, to only about 30% of their former population. There are probably plenty of factors, but humans are behind most of them. The biggest factor is probably loss of habitat as more and more prairie is plowed under in service to nut orchards (in our area at least), and the essentially unrestrained use of pesticides that has caused the insect population on our planet to plummet drastically (recent reports suggest that 70-80% of bugs have disappeared in recent decades). There's the cliché of the canary in the coal mine to describe the harbinger of things to come, but a new version would be the disappearing Larks of the prairie.

I've been kind of depressed lately that we really have arrived at the Silent Spring that Rachel Carson wrote about half a century ago.

In case you were wondering why they are called "horned" larks...

Horned Lark in the California Prairielands near Knights Ferry

With the first days of spring, we are starting to explore the Sierra Nevada foothills and what's left of the California prairie in the eastern part of the Great Valley. On Saturday we were in the Red Hills, seeing many flowers but few birds, but then we headed down to Willms Road out of Knight's Ferry, a backroad providing access to the many ranches in the foothills. There's a stock pond that we like to check out every so often, and along the way we ran across several Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris) sitting on fenceposts and searching in the grass for tidbits of food.

In case there's any doubt about why they are called "horned" larks, the post-sitting bird turned his head and showed us the upturned feathers that give him his name. The Horned Larks are common birds, but fewer in number than they used to be (perhaps only 30% of their numbers fifty years ago). A likely suspect could be loss of habitat, either to development or to reforestation efforts.

It was a beautiful day on the prairie, perhaps the prettiest kind of day we get all year out here. It's been a wet year, finally, the grass is thick and green and the usually dry waterways are flowing. The foothill rock layers are composed of volcanic mudflows and ash deposits bespeaking a violent origin, but today all was serene.

Horned Larks Along Willms Road, Redux

It's the funniest thing. Once you've seen a thing, you'll always see a thing. Two weeks ago I noticed Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris) during our drive along the prairie on Willms Road south of Knights Ferry in the Sierra Nevada foothills. I took a couple of poorly focused photographs, and posted them at the end of February. I promised to try and get better pictures next time.

So "next time" was today. We drove the road through the prairelands very slowly, and the Horned Larks weren't just "out there", they were next to the road, and they didn't flee when we pulled out the cameras.

There were males and females both. The males are the brightly colored ones. The "horns" are formed by upturned feathers behind their eyes.

The female decided to jump into the grass to show of some of the wildflowers that have started to bloom out here.

The vernal pools had been rejuvenated by the recent rains, and flowers are beginning to show up in abundance. There is such richness right now in this "normal" rain year after four bruising years of drought.

Horned Lark on Willms Road in the California Prairie

I saw a bird the other day for the first time. As usual, it's not because the bird is rare, but because I'm not the most observant birder out there, with only two years of careful watching. It was a Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris), a denizen of one of the most endangered of California habitats: the vernal pool prairie.

Better pictures will have to wait for another day. They were far out in the grasslands, and I was at extreme zoom. I thought we were seeing Meadowlarks, but realized that something was different about them. The Horned Larks consume mostly insects, which makes the grasslands an ideal place for them. They are found from sea level to 13,000 feet, and range across all of North America, from southernmost Mexico to the northernmost arctic barrens. Despite their adaptability, their numbers have been plummeting over the last fifty years.

The California prairie is an endangered habitat because it has been mostly converted to agricultural fields. 95% of the Great Valley is under the plow, for instance, and the less fertile lands of the Sierra Nevada foothills have been given over to grazing. The lands are for the most part are privately owned. The area we were exploring is currently being used for grazing, but tens of thousands of acres just to the west have been ripped up and planted with almond trees. The water used for irrigating the trees is coming from irreplaceable groundwater.

In these foothill environments, an impermeable clay layer prevents some rainwater from percolating underground, forming vernal pools that will persist for weeks at a time. Numerous endemic plants and animals have adapted to wet-dry environment. Animals hatch, grow and breed quickly, leaving eggs than can lie in the soil for years sometimes. Flowers have an equally quick life cycle. They were just beginning to bloom when we passed through.