Tweets, As Lark Sparrows are widely distributed as a breeding passerine in
central and western North America, their breeding habitats are necessarily
varied. In eastern Washington, however, they are essentially limited to open
shrub-steppe habitats, ie. where shrub cover is reduced.

Though some argue they are found in dense shrub habitats, I want to refute
this by saying they may seem to occupy dense sagelands, but it must be
recognized that many shrub-steppe stands in the Columbia Basin are a complex
of plant communities due to varied topography, elevation and aspect. For
example: it is not unusual on major east-west trending ridges on the Yakima
Training Center in south-central Washington to stand on a relatively
shrub-free south-facing slope amidst singing Lark Sparrows where only 50
meters away on a northwest aspect with high bunchgrass cover and sparse sage
(usually threetip sagebrush) find singing Vesper and Brewer's Sparrows and
Sage Thrashers, but no Lark Sparrows. A hundred meters to the east on a
southeast slope there may be only Sage Sparrows and no Lark Sparrows! There
might even be a Grasshopper Sparrow pair or two within earshot. All these
species may be heard from one spot! A casual observer might conclude they
all occur evenly over the landscape, yet this is almost certainly not so. My
two seasons on the Hanford Site in 1994 and 1995 revealed a simpler
situation there than on the Yakima Training Center presumably because the
topography is more uniform over large acreages.

It is quickly becoming evident to me the 300,000+-acre Yakima Training
Center is the hub of the shrub-steppe region of Washington. The sheer number
of acres of shrub-steppe in reasonable to excellent condition and complex
topography (ridges, ravines, also wet to the west, dry to the east) forms a
very large piece of ground for shrub-steppe obligates. It forms a wonderful
outdoor laboratory, because of its complex topography. Discerning patterns
of species distribution on the ground is now becoming clear to me given
these three years (1996 on the Yakima Training Center) of tramping the
shrub-steppe.

Andy Stepniewski
Wapato WA

>On Tue, 23 Jul 1996 steppie at wolfenet.com wrote:
>> No Sage or Lartk Sparrows were noted at this wet area; these species were
>> still in their usual breeding habitats which are the lower, drier
>> communities of the shrub-steppe zone.
>
>Hi Tweets, let's talk about this for a second. Lark Sparrow records from
>the BBA occur throughout the Columbia Basin, Palouse, and Okanogan Valley.
>My (albeit limited) experience with them in Washington is only in stands
>of Big Sage during the breeding season. Other reports and printed
>material also bear this out, yet they are surely breeding in nonforested
>habitats throughout eastern Washington. So what do people perceive as
>Lark Sparrow's *preferred* breeding habitat? Three months of fieldwork at
>Sagebrush Flats in 1992 yielded only one sighting and no nests found, yet
>we found numerous nests of the other sagebrush species.
>
>-------------
>Michael R. Smith
>Univ. of Washington, Seattle
>whimbrel at u.washington.edu
>http://salmo.cqs.washington.edu/~wagap/mike/mike.html
>
>