The song flight begins with a steep climb, continues in a hovering hold at height, and ends in a descent that may be a slow parachute or a sudden drop. Song is produced almost continuously throughout, and individual flights lasting more than a minute are routine, with the longest running well beyond that. The bird can be plainly heard while barely visible against the sky.
The apparent continuity comes from the syrinx, the paired vocal organ at the base of a bird's windpipe, and from very rapid mini-breaths taken between phrases. This lets a small bird sustain output that a single lungful could not support, while flying hard enough to stay aloft in still air.
The skylark's conservation picture is worse than its global Least Concern listing suggests. In Britain and much of western Europe, the switch from spring-sown to autumn-sown cereals left crops too tall and dense at nesting time, and breeding numbers fell sharply from the 1970s onward.