Your mention about Skylarks brought back a few memories.

Until aged 11, I lived in a small village out in the countryside and was alway out in the fields. Then. some fields were always "Permanent Pasture" = they were never ploughed. There were clumps of coarser grass here and there and I used to see the Skylarks land away from one, run along the (shorter) grass and in to one of those clumps where it had a nest.

Now, fields like that are mostly a thing of the past.

A mile from here, there's a "Country Park" which was formed on the site of an old sand & gravel quarry which was later filled in by "The Tip" and grassed over. Over time, some bits sunk a bit and other bits got rutted when they mowed the grass. There used to be numerous Skylarks singing over there and they used the un-cut grass areas for nesting and I used to see them doing the same thing as above = landing then running over the shorter grass to their nest site.

Then, the council decided not to mow the grass any more "for the wildlife"..... There's no Skylarks there now!

I think the Skylarks need a bit of short grass to land, look round and make sure nothing predatory follows then to their nest?

There's another park not far from here and the council have done the same thing there "for the wildlife"......