The Malabar Lark, or Malabar Crested Lark, Galerida malabarica, is a sedentary breeding bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 in western India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.

This is a common bird of open country, cultivation and scrub, often at some altitude. It nests on the ground, laying two to three egg

Egg (biology)

An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...

s. Its food is seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

s and insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s, the latter especially in the breeding season.

This is a smallish lark

Lark

Larks are passerine birds of the family Alaudidae. All species occur in the Old World, and in northern and eastern Australia; only one, the Shore Lark, has spread to North America, where it is called the Horned Lark...

, slightly smaller than the Skylark

Skylark

The Skylark is a small passerine bird species. This lark breeds across most of Europe and Asia and in the mountains of north Africa. It is mainly resident in the west of its range, but eastern populations are more migratory, moving further south in winter. Even in the milder west of its range,...

. It has a long spiky erectile crest. It is greyer than the Skylark, and lacks the white wing and tail edges of that species, which is a winter visitor to India.

It is very similar to the Crested Lark

Crested Lark

The Crested Lark, Galerida cristata, breeds across most of temperate Eurasia from Portugal to northeast China and eastern India, and in Africa south to Niger...

, Galerida cristata, which breeds in northern India. It is smaller and dark-streaked reddish brown in plumage

Feather

Feathers are one of the epidermal growths that form the distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on birds and some non-avian theropod dinosaurs. They are considered the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates, and indeed a premier example of a complex evolutionary novelty. They...

, whereas the Crested Lark is grey. The belly is white. The sexes are similar.

The Sykes's Lark, or Tawny Lark, Galerida deva, is another Indian relative. That species also has reddish-brown plumage, but is smaller, shorter-billed, with a stiff upright crest and has plain rufous underparts.