Lark Bunting

Calamospiza melanocorys

The male Lark Bunting makes a dramatic transformation in spring from a drab brown bird to a shocking black bird with white wings. It changes more completely between seasons than any other member of the sparrow clan. Our bird will spend summers in the western prairies from northern Texas to southern Canada. Winters find these birds in Mexico and the southern USA east of the Colorado River into Texas.

Like other members of the Sparrow Clan, this bird will consume many insects in the summer, but it eats seeds and other vegetable matter all year. Given that prairies have large expanses of open country, void of high perches, many birds who live here have adopted the practice of ‘singing from on high’. These birds will fly to great heights and flutter down while singing. Typically, these birds move in tight groups, flying from food source to food source. Our bird usually forages by fast movements in the open areas, avoiding dense cover. On their winter grounds, these birds will flock with other seed eating specialists.

Modern science regards Lark Buntings as monotypic (i.e. no subspecies).

Until I visited Grasslands National Park in southern Saskatchewan, all the birds I’d met were in their winter garb. My meetings with non-breeding birds came in Arizona, New Mexico, and in Langtry, east of Big Bend near the Mexican border with Texas. During my 2023 explorations of Canada, I got to witness at a distance, the dark, white-winged larking flight displays of these male birds.