My memory isn’t want it used to be, but it seems as though we used to have a lot more Meadowlarks around our area than we do now.  I do recall seeing a lot more fields of set aside, or in other words, fields that were not planted with row crops, but put into the Conservation Reserve Program.   

I suspect this helped the Meadowlark quite a bit back then.  In some areas the bird is still doing very well and is quite common, but much of this is going to depend on how much of their preferred habitat is available for them.  And that would typically be native prairies and grasslands.  

They have a really distinctive and memorable call, and it was really neat to see this one on a recent trip to Nebraska.