The thick-billed lark (''Ramphocoris clotbey'') or Clotbey lark is a species of

lark Larks are passerine birds of the family Alaudidae. Larks have a cosmopolitan distribution with the largest number of species occurring in Africa. Only a single species, the horned lark, occurs in North America, and only Horsfield's bush lark occ ...

in the family

Alaudidae Larks are passerine birds of the family Alaudidae. Larks have a cosmopolitan distribution with the largest number of species occurring in Africa. Only a single species, the horned lark, occurs in North America, and only Horsfield's bush lark occ ...

Taxonomy and systematics

It was named after

Antoine Clot Antoine Barthelemy Clot (7 November 1793 – 28 August 1868) was a French doctor known as Clot Bey while practicing in Egypt. Early life and education He was born at Grenoble. In 1823, he graduated in medicine and surgery at Montpellier. His thes ...

. It was originally described as belonging to the genus ''

Melanocorypha ''Melanocorypha'' is a small genus of birds in the lark family. The current genus name, ''Melanocorypha'' is from Ancient Greek ''melas'', "black", and ''koruphos'' a term used by ancient writer for a now unknown bird, but here confused with '' ...

'' and is now placed in the

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unisp ...

genus ''Ramphocoris''.

Distribution and habitat

It is found in northern Africa from Mauritania and Morocco to Libya, also in central regions of the

Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula (, , or , , ) or Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia, situated north-east of Africa on the Arabian plate. At , comparable in size to India, the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world. Geographically, the ...

. Its natural

habitat In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...

s are

subtropical The subtropical zones or subtropics are geographical zone, geographical and Köppen climate classification, climate zones immediately to the Northern Hemisphere, north and Southern Hemisphere, south of the tropics. Geographically part of the Ge ...

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the equator, where the sun may shine directly overhead. This contrasts with the temperate or polar regions of Earth, where the Sun can never be directly overhead. This is because of Earth's ax ...

dry

shrubland Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominance (ecology), dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbaceous plant, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally o ...

and hot

desert A desert is a landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions create unique biomes and ecosystems. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About one-third of the la ...

Gallery

Thick-billed Lark.ogv, Adult, Saudi Arabia 1993 Ramphocoris clotbey MHNT 224 Tamrikat Mauritanie HdB.jpg, Eggs of ''Ramphocoris clotbey'' MHNT

References

thick-billed lark The thick-billed lark (''Ramphocoris clotbey'') or Clotbey lark is a species of lark in the family Alaudidae. Taxonomy and systematics It was named after Antoine Clot. It was originally described as belonging to the genus '' Melanocorypha'' and ...

Birds of North Africa Birds of the Middle East

Articles containing video clips Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Alaudidae-stub