A nice summer picture for you.
Here is a picture of what I thought was a Sky Lark but I was incorrect, in fact it was about a year before I worked out that in fact it is a Corn Bunting. These birds used to be plentiful in the UK but they are now on the red list due to habitat loss and changes to farming methods, however on a positive note they seem to be doing very well over here in our surrounding fields.
One of the ways to identify them is that they have a peculiar trait of dangling their legs when flying short distances which can be seen in the photo. The male has a colourful sex life and have been known to mate with up-to 18 females in a single season (must be something in their diet) but they do not readily take part in the incubation of the eggs, hardly surprising if they have to fly between 18 nests.
Nev
Val says the very mention of a corn bunting set me tingling. When I worked in the UK in public libraries I did a project with readers called the " Clatter of Clogs" We lived near a cotton mill in Bolton and all our readers at the library were retired mill workers. They had memories that we recorded for posterity which are now in Bolton Library local history archives. I called the project the clatter of clogs. After listening to some of the memories, many of the workers told me they passed through corn fields on their way to work and were shepherded to work by the distinctive cry of the corn bunting.
The project could easily have been called " the cry of the corn bunting" Sadly those fields are now housing estates... and the birds well they have gone with the loss of habitat.
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