Brown Songlark

male 24-26 cm, female 18-19 cm. Male, Breeding: bill black; crown/nape fawn, contrasting with sooty-brown face/throat/breast; legs long, flesh-brown. Male, Non-breeding: bill light brown; lores blackish, eyebrow pale; feathers of upperparts patterned by brown centres, paler margins; rump coloured like back; face/underparts pale grey-brown; throat whitish; centre of breast/abdomen blackish brown. Female: similar, much smaller, paler; bill/lores pale brown. Immature: like female. Mostly silent, solitary, or in loose companies when not breeding; walks, runs through grass. In spring/summer, displaying males sit upright on stumps, fences, telephone poles/wires over grassland, tails cocked. Take off singing, rising on long, circling, line in fluttering flight broken by glides, wings upswept, long undercarriage lowered; descend in shallow glide, drop. Normal flight swift, undulating, with glides.