The Horned Lark is a bird of the barest, most open ground, so well camouflaged in sandy browns that it often goes unseen until a flock flushes from a plowed field or gravel shoulder. Up close it is subtly beautiful, with a black chest patch, a black facial mask, a pale yellow throat, and two tiny tufts of black feathers on the head — the "horns" — that the male can raise. It walks and runs rather than hops, keeping low to the earth in habitats too sparse for most songbirds.
Horned Larks are among the earliest nesters in Michigan, sometimes laying eggs on bare ground in February while snow still lies in patches, and they are one of the few native songbirds truly at home in wide, treeless country. Resident birds are joined in winter by numbers from the north, when large flocks scour stubble fields, roadsides, and shorelines for seeds, often mixing with Snow Buntings and Lapland Longspurs. The male's tinkling flight song, delivered high overhead, carries across the open land in early spring.
Feeds mainly on the seeds of grasses, weeds, and waste grain gathered from bare and short-grass ground, adding insects during the breeding season to feed young. It forages by walking over open ground, and winter flocks work stubble fields, roadsides, and shorelines for seeds.
On the barest open ground — plowed and stubble fields, short-grass areas, gravel lots, road shoulders, and shorelines. It favors habitat too sparse and open for most songbirds and often flushes from underfoot in such places.
Nearly so. Horned Larks are among the earliest nesters in Michigan, sometimes laying eggs on bare ground in late winter, in February or March, while snow still lingers in the fields.
Two small tufts of black feathers on the male's head that can be raised, giving the bird its name. They are often hard to see and lie flat much of the time.
Juveniles are spangled with pale spots above and show none of the adult's black mask, black bib, or feather 'horns'. They can look startlingly unfamiliar in midsummer fields where the adults are already obvious.
An exaltation of larks is the old term, though it belongs to the European Skylark; in the field, Michigan birders just say flock. Winter flocks are worth scanning for longspurs and buntings.
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