Horned Larks commence nesting!

A calf, just dropped, gazes about its new world while mother eyes me. I visited an urban farm in the midst of Columbus last Tuesday, to see what I could see. The operation deals with cattle, and lots of them, which creates good habitat for our earliest nesting native songbird.

A male horned lark, Eremophila alpestris subsp. praticola. This is the "prairie" horned lark, the group of larks that nest in Ohio. There are 20 other described subspecies of this wide-ranging bird of wide open spaces. Their taxonomy is under review, and someday we may end up with additional species of horned larks.

This lark was using a cow patty is a perch from which to sing. The cattle create short grass meadows punctuated with patches of barren ground - just the sort of habitat that horned larks thrive in. I imagine they run the risk of having their ground nests trampled on occasion, though.

I spent much quality time watching the larks. The males frequently alit atop posts to sing their wonderful song, a musical cascade of jumbled tinkling notes. Occasionally, in exuberant bursts, they would flutter high into the air and let their song rain down to those of us stuck far below. The females are likely already on eggs. Horned larks are very hardy, and will ride out the potential perils of nesting in very early spring, when weather is wildly unpredictable. It's 66 F as I write this, but tonight the mercury plummets to 28 F. The female larks will have to really hunker down on those eggs.