A COMMON resident over all of Namibia, Botswana, Southern Mozambique and the northern and north east parts of South Africa, is the Sabota Lark.
Favoring the semi-arid savanna especially rocky slopes with bushes and trees, fringes of dry watercourses and thorny bushveld with tall grass, these larks are usually solitary where they often perch and sing from the top of a bush or tree with the head drawn into the shoulders. The call is a jumble of fluty and trilled notes somewhat canary like, but highly variable and incorporation calls of over 60 other species of birds. A loud pip-pip-peeu is repeated every few seconds.
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Often they forage on open ground away from cover, walking with flexed legs and a crouched posture. Their food comprises of 60 per cent seeds and 40 per cent insects.
Breeding takes place from October to February and the nest is a cusp of grass and rootlets roofed over by dome of grass with a foundation of small stones and often among larger stones. Two to four white spotted brown or yellow brown eggs are laid. The incubation and nestling times are unrecorded.
The tribal name is Sebotha and in Afrikaans its called ‘die Sobotalewerik’.
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