Crested lark

The crested lark (Galerida cristata) is a species of lark distinguished from the other 81 species of lark by the crest of feathers that rise up in territorial or courtship displays and when singing. Common to mainland Europe, the birds can also be found in northern Africa and in parts of western Asia and China. It is a non-migratory bird, but can occasionally be found as a vagrant in Great Britain.

Taxonomy and systematics

The crested lark was one of the many species originally described by Linnaeus in his 18th-century work, Systema Naturae. He gave it the binomial name Alauda cristata. German naturalist Friedrich Boie placed it in the new genus Galerida in 1821, but did not define what characters distinguished in from larks in the genus Alauda. Colin Harrison recommended sinking members of Galerida and Lullula back into Alauda in 1865 due to lack of defining characters. Alban Guillaumet and colleagues noted the distinctiveness of populations from the Maghreb - birds in the dryer parts of Morocco and Tunisia had longer bills while those in more coastal northern parts had shorter bills typical of the European subspecies. The authors sampled the mitochondrial DNA and found they were distinct genetically. The Maghreb lark, comprising subspecies macrorhyncha and randonii, has been found to have diverged 1.9 million years ago and is regarded now by the IOC as a separate species.