Vorstman's Guideto the birds of Southern Africa

All species › Passerines › Larks

Larks | Alaudidae

Leeuweriken | Alondras

Ground birds in brown and sand, streaked all over and built to walk rather than hop: the hind claw is long and almost straight, and the back of the tarsus carries a row of separate scales instead of the smooth plate other songbirds have there. Almost all species sing on the wing, climbing or hovering, sometimes for minutes on end above ground that offers no song post. The nest is a scrape on bare soil lined with grass, and the chicks walk away from it before they can fly, which limits losses when the field is cut. Bills range from short and heavy for seed to long and curved for digging in the soil.

Native species 29 species

Species that occur here by nature: breeding birds, winter visitors and passage migrants. They are arranged by genus, in the sequence of the list.

Amirafra 2 species

Ammomanopsis 1 species

Calandrella 1 species

Calendulauda 5 species

Certhilauda 4 species

Chersomanes 1 species

Corypha 3 species

Eremopterix 3 species

Galerida 1 species

Heteromirafra 1 species

Mirafra 2 species

Pinarocorys 1 species

Spizocorys 4 species

Vagrants 1 species

Birds blown in from other continents. They have no range here, and so no distribution map.