SKYLARK: when a perfect summer's day goes wrong

FOR such a small bird, it seems amazing that the skylark features in so many people's memories of perfect summer days.

From its lofty vantage point way up high in a clear blue sky, the skylark's continuous warbling used to be as familiar during summer as the feel of hot sun on skin.

So I must admit I was shocked recently to learn that 75 per cent of our skylarks have been lost as a result of yet more bureaucratic bungling.

The drastic decline in skylark numbers has been traced to an EU initiative for UK farmers to move from spring-sown to autumn-sown cereals, according to new research by the RSPB.

It seems that sowing cereals in spring was a great help to this little brown and white bird because it meant that stubble left over until then provided food and cover through the harsh winter months.

With the area of spring-sown cereals now reduced from 73 per cent to just 16 per cent of available UK land, it is little wonder skylarks have virtually gone to the wall.

Attempts are being made to address the loss.

Even so, the long-term fate of this shy, crested bird remains in the balance. Apart from having that piercing voice and an ability to remain a tiny dot in the sky for minutes on end, the skylark seems quite plain when it falls back to earth.

Weighing about 45 grammes, it lays up to five brown and white eggs in a nest among grass; eats seeds, insects and worms; and prefers to walk around rather than hop.

Personally, I will always associate skylarks with getting my first real watch the summer after I passed my 11-plus.

Lying on my back in the grass, a procession of skylarks singing high above me, I must have examined that watch's glorious gold and silver face for hours.

Life seemed rosy until I was irritated by some kids from my old primary school messing about next to a nearby pond.

A commotion started and I sat up to look.

It seemed that one of them had dropped his bicycle in and could not get it out.

Tut-tutting at this interruption, I got up and strode over.

Within seconds, I was in full command of the situation, lying on my stomach and reaching down into the pond to grab the bike's front wheel, just visible underwater.

"Hey, Dave," one of the miserable wretches suddenly chirped."Is your watch waterproof ?"

"It's new," I said."Of course, it's...."

I glanced at my watch from which a line of tiny bubbles was now escaping, making its way towards the surface "...waterproof."

Abruptly, I dropped the bike back in the pond and, peering intently at my beloved watch, set off running back home.

Before I got there, the watch's face had misted over and it had stopped. Never to go again.

It wasn't waterproof at all.

Even the perfect summer's day can hit the buffers, skylarks or not.

Let's hope these beguiling birds enjoy a better fate than my watch - and time does not run out for them.