White-winged lark
species of bird
The white-winged lark (Alauda leucoptera) is a species of lark breeding from southwestern Russia east through south-central Russia and Kazakhstan to the extreme west of China. It is partially migratory, with birds moving southwest in winter, west to southern Ukraine and south to northern Iran. The southernmost breeding birds are mainly resident. It is a very rare vagrant to western Europe.
Taxonomy and systematics
The current genus name is from the Latin for lark. The specific leucoptera means "white-winged", from leukos, "white", and pteron, "wing". Formerly, the white-winged lark was classified as belonging to the genus Melanocorypha until moved to Alauda in 2014 following a 2013 genetic study of the family which showed it was more closely related to Alauda than Melanocorypha.
Description
This lark with flashing white wing patches is large and robust, usually 17–19 cm in length, with a wingspan of 35 cm. Both sexes weigh about 44 g. In flight, it is unmistakable due to its striking wing pattern, with black outer flight feathers, white inner flight feathers, and the rest of the wing chestnut.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1137284. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2014 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “White-winged lark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.