Ashy-crowned Sparrow-Lark
Ashy-crowned Sparrow-Lark (ACS-Lark) is a small, squat, thick billed crestless lark. Male sandy brown above, black below, with ashy crown and whitish cheeks.Eats seeds and insects. Male performs a remarkable aerobic display.
He shoots up vertically on quivering wings, thirty meters or so, and hovers there for a while with a pleasant song and then nosedives perpendicularly some distance with wings pulled in sides. Using the momentum he suddenly turns about to face the sky and with a few rapid flaps and wings again closed, shoots up a few meters once more. At the crest of the wave he reverses, hovers and sings for while and repeats the nose dive and so on in descending steps till when near the ground he flattens out and comes to rest on a clod or stone. A pleasant little 'wheeching' song it sings during these extravagant proceedings brings the name vaanambaadi in Tamil. . The whole maneuvre is soon repeated (Salim Ali). Also it likes a lot to flow in the dusty tracks of bullock-cart (Rathnam).
An interesting post about this bird in Tamil by Mr. Kalpattu Nadarajan, a veteran photographer and nature writer can be read here.
சாம்பல் தலை வானம்பாடி, மண்ணாம் வானம்பாடி (in Tamil)
He shoots up vertically on quivering wings, thirty meters or so, and hovers there for a while with a pleasant song and then nosedives perpendicularly some distance with wings pulled in sides. Using the momentum he suddenly turns about to face the sky and with a few rapid flaps and wings again closed, shoots up a few meters once more. At the crest of the wave he reverses, hovers and sings for while and repeats the nose dive and so on in descending steps till when near the ground he flattens out and comes to rest on a clod or stone. A pleasant little 'wheeching' song it sings during these extravagant proceedings brings the name vaanambaadi in Tamil. . The whole maneuvre is soon repeated (Salim Ali). Also it likes a lot to flow in the dusty tracks of bullock-cart (Rathnam).
An interesting post about this bird in Tamil by Mr. Kalpattu Nadarajan, a veteran photographer and nature writer can be read here.
சாம்பல் தலை வானம்பாடி, மண்ணாம் வானம்பாடி (in Tamil)
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