The windswept slopes of the last remaining grassland in the Rumney Marshes ACEC are blanketed with a thin layer of fresh snow.  Snow so light and fluffy, it filters through the blades of grass and wildflowers stems like windblown sands on a foredune.  Each step offers a guess.  One, two, maybe three, or perhaps as far as six inches before your foot touches bottom. The landscape is tinged a steely-grey and feels barren with the touch of frostbite nipping at your exposed skin.

Ten paces into the distance a small stone moves, cries ‘eep’ and takes flight.  In the surrounding space, fifty more stones materialize from the sparse grass and form wings.  Staying together as a wide spread flock, some fly true, others surf through the air in a distinctly undulating pattern that causes an occasional squabble and chase within the confines of the flock.  Keeping low on the horizon, the flock makes a wide arc over the ridge and out of sight, only to turn ‘round and return.  Standing still, the flock parts a seam just beyond your fingertips, closes ranks and disappears back into the grass.

The Horned Lark, Eremphila alpestris, is a regular winter resident at the Bear Creek Wildlife Sanctuary, and in 2016, established a first time breeding population at the Sanctuary.  This is the first recorded Horned Lark nest in Essex County since 1977, although adults with young were seen in 1984, and again in 1993.

The Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program describes the Horned Lark as a songbird of open areas and sparse vegetation, particularly coastal dunes, air fields, and agricultural fields. 

Originally, not known as a breeding species in Massachusetts until the mid-19th century, Horned Larks expanded from a mainly winter resident status, to establishing a breeding population of the prairie race, Eremphila alpestris praticola, during the agricultural revolution.  With the onset of reforestation, the once wide spread breeding population correspondingly retracted, and are now found primarily associated with large dune systems on Cape Cod, the Islands, and the North Shore.

During the census periods for the Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas I and II, the Massachusetts’ populations of Horned Larks further declined to scatted locations along the Connecticut River Valley and the Southeastern Coastal Plains, and on Cape Cod and the Islands.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology places the global Horned Lark population as numerous, but steadily declining at 2% per year from 1966-2015, resulting in a cumulative population decline of 71%.  Partners in Flight estimates the global breeding population at 120 million with 62% of the population residing a portion of the year within the United States.