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Institut de recherche pour la conservation des zones humides méditerranéennes

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Titre :	Saving the Sky Lark: new solutions for a declining farmland bird
Auteurs :	Paul F. Donald, Auteur ; Tony J. Morris, Auteur
Type de document :	Article
Dans :	British Birds (98(11) NOV 2005)
Article en page(s) :	570-578
Résumé :	Research on the Sky Lark Alauda arvensis has revealed a great deal about the causes of this species' sustained population decline in recent decades. Of the many changes in its farmland habitats, the most important, though not the only, cause of this decline is the switch from spring- to autumn-planting of cereals. The productivity of pairs in autumn-sown cereals may be as low as half that of birds in spring-sown crops, because the taller, denser crop becomes unsuitable for nesting and feeding earlier in the breeding season. Cereals support a high proportion of breeding Sky Larks in the UK, and these changes in productivity probably explain much of the observed national population decline. Identifying the mechanisms of decline has led to the development of a targeted solution. Leaving small, rectangular patches of bare ground ('Sky Lark plots') within autumn-sown cereals appears to provide many of the benefits of spring-sown cereals at very low cost. Sky Larks in fields with these plots raise more chicks in a season than those in fields without plots and often strongly select those parts of fields in which they have been created. On one farm, Sky Lark numbers more than doubled after the introduction of Sky Lark plots. Funding is now available to pay farmers in England to create these plots, which is cause for hope that Sky Lark populations will show signs of recovery in the near future.

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