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Résumé :
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The Skylark is generally considered to be a bird of open habitats avoiding woody vegetation and any kind of vertical structures. In addition, recent studies on intensively used arable lands suggest that Skylarks require patches of open ground. Habitat analyses in an abandoned military training area in Eastern Germany show that this view may be biased by a lack of studies from semi-natural habitats in central Europe. In the study area, Skylark did not avoid forest edges and coppices either in their territories or near their nests. Use of elevated perches was observed regularly. Skylarks apparently have the behavioural repertoire for breeding in semi-open habitats. No need for patches of open ground could be detected. Territory size did not depend on the amount of such areas in the territory. It is argued that results obtained in other studies are valid for intensively used landscapes but do not provide a full picture of the habitat requirements of Skylarks. Populations on 'steppe-like' arable land may be sink populations where the poorly structured habitat forces Skylarks to hold large territories in which they produce fewer offspring. In semi-natural landscapes they can hold smaller territories and breed in field-forest ecotones. Possibly Skylarks did not colonise Europe only in the Neolithic, as had been suggested by earlier authors, but already lived here long before, not only in coastal and fluvial habitats and mires, but also in semi-open habitats of a partly forested landscape.
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