Blanford's Lark or Blanford's Short-toed Lark (Calandrella blanfordi) is a small passerine

Passerine

A passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders: with over 5,000 identified species, it has roughly...

 bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 of the lark

Lark

Larks are passerine birds of the family Alaudidae. All species occur in the Old World, and in northern and eastern Australia; only one, the Shore Lark, has spread to North America, where it is called the Horned Lark...

 family, Alaudidae. It occurs in north-east Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 and Arabia. Its name commemorates the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 zoologist William Thomas Blanford

William Thomas Blanford

William Thomas Blanford was an English geologist and naturalist. He is best remembered as the editor of a major series on The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma.-Biography:Blanford was born in London...

. It was formerly included in either the Greater Short-toed Lark

Greater Short-toed Lark

The Greater Short-toed Lark or sometimes just Short-toed Lark is a small passerine bird. It breeds in southern Europe, northwest Africa, and across temperate Asia from Turkey and southern Russia to Mongolia. It is sometimes considered conspecific with Calandrella cinerea...

 (C. brachydactyla) or the Red-capped Lark

Red-capped Lark

The Red-capped Lark, Calandrella cinerea, is a small passerine bird. This lark breeds in the highlands of eastern Africa southwards from Ethiopia and northern Somalia. In the south, its range stretches across the continent to Angola and south to the Cape in South Africa.This is a species of short...

 (C. cinerea) but is now commonly treated as a separate species. Erlanger's Lark

Erlanger's Lark

Erlanger’s Lark is a small passerine bird of the lark family. It occurs in Africa in the highlands of Ethiopia.It was formerly considered to be a subspecies of Blanford's Lark, Calandrella blanfordi, but Clements splits this form as a separate species-References:*...

 (C. erlangeri) is sometimes included in this species.

It is 14–15 centimetres long. The upperparts are pale sandy-brown with some darker streaking and the crown is rufous. The underparts are pale and plain apart from a small dark patch on the side of the neck made up of vertical streaks. The Greater Short-toed Lark is similar but has a greyer, more-streaked crown. Erlanger's and Red-capped Larks have darker upperparts with more streaking and a darker rufous crown. Erlanger's Lark has larger dark neck-patches while in Red-capped Lark the patches are rufous.

Blanford's Lark has a sparrow-like flight-call. The song

Bird song

Bird vocalization includes both bird calls and bird songs. In non-technical use, bird songs are the bird sounds that are melodious to the human ear. In ornithology and birding, songs are distinguished by function from calls.-Definition:The distinction between songs and calls is based upon...

 is given in a circular song-flight and includes a mixture of chew-chew-chew-chew notes and fluid phrases.

There are three subspecies: C. b. blanfordi in Eritrea

Eritrea

Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...

, C. b. daaroodensis in northern Somalia

Somalia

Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...

 and C. b. eremica in Yemen

Yemen

The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....

 and south-west Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...

. They occur on open stony plains, often with bushes. In Arabia, it breeds between 1800 and 2500 metres above sea-level with some birds dispersing to lower ground in winter. The species is often seen in flocks outside the breeding season.