On Thursday 25 April 2019, Frans van Rosmalen was birding in polder De Motte, along the Jillesweg. At around 9:00 hours he heard a Skylark-like song, but was not sure. At a distance of about 20 meters he saw a lark species sitting on a pile of grass. He took several pictures and uploaded these on his iPhone and imported it into the so called Merlin Bird ID-App. This app answered with 'Calandra Lark - Melanocorypha calandra'! He warned Jordy Haukes to ask for confirmation and Jordy agreed with the identification. He uploaded the record with pictures into waarneming.nl.
It took limited time to warn every birder in the country and half an hour after the discovery, the first birders arrived and could see the bird very well freely foraging on a ploughed field. Later that day, the bird moved to a grassy field, where most of the time only its head was visible. The bird stayed till dark (I saw it around 17:35 after a long ride with lots of traffic jams!) and was also seen the next day. It was seen singing from time to time, also during short display flights.
It was accepted as the sixth record for the Netherlands. Previous records were in October 1980, May 1988, May 2005, April 2011 and May 2011.
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