Galerida cristata caucasica

The crested lark (Galerida cristata) is a species of lark widespread across Eurasia and northern Africa. It is a non-migratory bird, but can occasionally be found as a vagrant in Great Britain.

Taxonomy and systematics: The crested lark was one of the many species originally described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae. It was classified in the genus Alauda until German naturalist Friedrich Boie placed it in the new genus Galerida in 1821. Colin Harrison recommended lumping members of Galerida and Lullula back into Alauda in 1865 due to a lack of defining characteristics. The current scientific name is derived from Latin. Galerida was the name for a lark with a crest, from galerum, "cap", and cristata means "crested". Alban Guillaumet and colleagues noted the distinctiveness of populations from the Maghreb—birds in the dryer parts of Morocco and Tunisia had longer bills while those in more coastal northern parts had shorter bills typical of the European subspecies. The authors sampled the mitochondrial DNA and found they were distinct genetically.

Subspecies: Thirty-five subspecies are recognized:

• G. c. pallida Brehm, CL, 1858 – Iberian Peninsula
• G. c. cristata (Linnaeus, C, 1758) – central Europe to Slovenia, Belarus, northern Hungary, and northern Ukraine
• G. c. neumanni Hilgert, C, 1907 – Italy (Toscana southward to Rome area)
• G. c. apuliae Jordans, A, 1935 – southern peninsular Italy and Sicily
• G. c. meridionalis Brehm, CL, 1841 – southwestern and southern Balkans, Ionian Islands (western Greece), Crete, and western Anatolian Türkiye
• G. c. cypriaca Bianchi, VL, 1907 – Kárpathos, Rhodes, and Cyprus
• G. c. tenuirostris Brehm, CL, 1858 – eastern Hungary and Romania to southern Russia and western Kazakhstan
• G. c. caucasica Taczanowski, W, 1888 – eastern Aegean Islands, northern Turkey, southern Caucasus, and western Transcaucasia
• G. c. kleinschmidti Erlanger, C, 1899 – northwestern Morocco (eastward to Rif Mountains and southward to Middle Atlas)
• G. c. riggenbachi Hartert, EJO, 1902 – western Morocco (Casablanca to Sous Valley)
• G. c. randonii Loche, V, 1860 – Hauts Plateaux of eastern Morocco and northwestern Algeria
• G. c. macrorhyncha Tristram, HB, 1859 – southern Morocco and northwestern Algeria south of Atlas Saharien to west-central Mauritania. Maghreb lark
• G. c. carthaginis Kleinschmidt, O & Hilgert, C, 1905 – coastal northeastern Morocco to northern Tunisia (eastward to Sousse)
• G. c. arenicola Tristram, HB, 1859 – northeastern Algerian Sahara to southern Tunisia and northwestern Libya
• G. c. festae Hartert, EJO, 1922 – coastal northeastern Libya (Benghazi to Tobruq)
• G. c. brachyura Tristram, HB, 1865 – northeastern Libya to coastal northern Egypt, northern Sinai, northern Saudi Arabia, and southern Iraq
• G. c. helenae Lavauden, AJL, 1926 – southeastern Algeria and immediately adjacent southwestern Libya
• G. c. jordansi Niethammer, GT, 1955 – northern Niger (Aïr Mountains)
• G. c. nigricans Brehm, CL, 1855 – northern Egypt (Nile Delta)
• G. c. maculata Brehm, CL, 1858 – Egypt (Nile Valley from Cairo to Aswan and El Faiyum)
• G. c. halfae Nicoll, MJ, 1921 – Egypt (Nile Valley south of Aswan) to far northern Sudan (Wadi Halfa)
• G. c. altirostris Brehm, CL, 1855 – eastern Sudan and Eritrea
• G. c. somaliensis Reichenow, A, 1907 – northern Somalia, southern Ethiopia, and northern Kenya
• G. c. balsaci Dekeyser, PL & Villiers, A, 1950 – coastal Mauritania
• G. c. senegallensis (Müller, PLS, 1776) – southern Mauritania, Senegambia, and Guinea-Bissau to Niger
• G. c. alexanderi Neumann, OR, 1908 – northern Nigeria to western Sudan and northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
• G. c. isabellina Bonaparte, CLJL, 1850 – central Sudan (Kordofan to Nile Valley)
• G. c. cinnamomina Hartert, EJO, 1904 – western Lebanon (western from Beirut) and northwestern Israel (Mount Carmel and Haifa)
• G. c. zion Meinertzhagen, R, 1920 – southern Turkey, Syria, eastern Lebanon, and eastern Israel (southward to Jerusalem)
• G. c. subtaurica (Kollibay, PR, 1912) – central Turkey to southern Transcaucasia, northwestern Iran, western Turkmenistan, and eastern Iraq
• G. c. magna Hume, AO, 1871 – central Iran and central Turkmenistan eastward to southern Mongolia, northwestern China, and southward to northwestern Pakistan
• G. c. leautungensis (Swinhoe, R, 1861) – Manchuria and northeastern China
• G. c. coreensis Taczanowski, W, 1888 – Korea
• G. c. lynesi Whistler, H, 1928 – northern Kashmir (Gilgit Valley)
• G. c. chendoola (Franklin, J, 1831) – foothills of southern Kashmir to eastern Pakistan, western and northern India, and southern Nepal

The subspecies G. c. macrorhyncha has sometimes been considered as a separate species, the Maghreb lark. The evidence from molecular genetic studies based on mitochondrial DNA sequences is inconsistent as to whether the Maghreb lark should be treated as a separate species.