Horned Lark

About the Horned Lark

The Horned Lark is a slim, ground-dwelling songbird of wide-open country. Males have a yellow face and throat crossed by a black mask, a black chest band, and two small black feather tufts - the "horns" - that can be raised or flattened. Females are duller versions of the same pattern.

Horned Larks walk rather than hop, picking seeds and insects from bare ground. They nest on the ground in a grass-lined cup, often beside a clump of dirt or a stone, and males perform a high, circling song flight over their territories. Outside the breeding season they gather in flocks that can number in the hundreds.

In Texas they are year-round birds of shortgrass prairie, plowed fields, airstrips, and gravel flats - anywhere the ground is bare and the horizon is long.