Sunday was a red letter day. Not only did we have four Waxwings dotting around parts of Cosmeston Lakes Country Park but one of our local birders found two Woodlarks in a nearby field. Woodlarks (Lullula arborea) are rare birds for my area, only usually seen on migration by those with the skills to recognise them in flight and the patience to watch the skies for several hours every morning – not me, in either case. And I’d only ever seen one Woodlark previously, at Thursley Common in Surrey, in May 2019, on a short trip with some birding mates.

Luckily, when I heard the news about the sighting, I was within (fast) walking distance of the field where the birds were and managed to get there in time to meet up with the finder and two other birders. The birds had moved since first being spotted, and they are quite small, and the field was full of clumps of stubble large enough to hide the larks, and their cryptic plumage means they almost disappear into the background, so we struggled to spot them for a while. Fortunately, one of the other birders had his thermal imager with him, which helped enormously with re-finding them, and I was able to enjoy good scope views of the birds preening and feeding. It was impossible to find the birds with my camera so I’m illustrating this post with my drawing (not done from memory, but rather from images I found online; the BTO has an excellent video about Skylarks and Woodlarks if you want to see what the birds really look like).