Tehachapi News

Western Meadowlark: one of the best singers in Tehachapi

There have now been over 250 species of birds whose appearance in the Tehachapi area has been confirmed by the Tehachapi Mountains Birding Club. One of my abiding favorites on this long list is the beautiful Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta).

These splendid birds are residents of open grasslands, savannahs, pastures and fields. Their markings are simple and easy to recognize: both males and females have brown and gray mottled backs, but their chests and bellies are bright lemon yellow with a large black V in the middle of their chests like a ceremonial sash.
  White feathers are visible on the outer edge of their short tails when they fly, which helps make identifying them easy as they descend into grasslands. Meadowlarks are heavy-bodied birds with relatively short wings and tails, and they tend to give a little short burst of flight and then glide down out of view into vegetation, much like another common Tehachapi bird: California quail.

A recognizable, cheerful appearance is not the main endearing quality of a meadowlark, however. That distinction belongs to the bird’s beautiful fluid singing voice. The poet Van Dyke described the meadowlark’s song as “leaking slowly upward from the ground. . .”

The meadowlark song tends to start with a few clear, short individual notes, followed by a rich descending warble of flutelike purity. The initial slow, well-paced whistles and the sudden trilling gurgle that follows are so familiar to me that I can hear it in my mind whenever I think of meadowlarks.

One of the pleasures of Spring is to sit quietly in a rolling grassy valley and listen to the competing songs of male meadowlarks ringing out like notes from a panpipe.
Meadowlarks tend to be found at eye level or lower. They frequently perch on fences and fenceposts, but are completely comfortable on the ground and will vanish down into grass if alarmed. They roost on the ground at night in small groups and they feed on the ground as well, using their long pointed bills to eat insects, spiders, sowbugs and seeds of grasses and forbs.

Meadowlarks build interesting cup nests on the ground out of coarse grass lined with fine soft grass. Unlike most ground nesters, however, meadowlarks also make a domed roof over their nest with an opening on one side. This helps shield the eggs, babies or incubating mother from the prying eyes of airborne predators. They are so well camouflaged that I have only found two of these well-built nests in my life.

Meadowlarks can thrive in close proximity to humans as long as they still have open grasslands in which to forage and nest. They adapt very well to pastures and fields and were one of the most- beloved birds on American farms in the past two centuries. They don’t fare as well with modern intensive agriculture, however, and they vanish entirely when fields are replaced with KB Homes housing tracts.

Open grasslands are one of the first habitats to disappear as populations increase because they tend to be the first to be farmed or developed. Since there is very little protected grassland in any of the four Tehachapi valleys, I think it’s time to start thinking about preserving some space somewhere for meadowlarks, badgers, horned larks, Northern Harriers, burrowing owls, wildflowers and the other living things that depend on prairie and grassland habitat.

The liquid song of the Western Meadowlark is a sound worth perpetuating.
Have a good week.