What to see
Watch out for pipits this month – can you locate Rock, Water and Meadow Pipits?
PIPITS are slim legged and walk on the ground. They don’t hop two-footed, or shuffle like Dunnocks. Two species have dark legs – a first useful clue. One of these is Rock Pipit, which is widespread around the coasts and often found in saltmarsh creeks and muddy backwaters in winter. These might be of the Scandinavian subspecies, littoralis, which is usually not distinguishable from the resident petrosus until the spring.
The other is Water Pipit. This is an odd species in that it comes to the UK in winter – where it favours wet marshes and firm but muddy lakesides – but breeds farther east or south, not to the north. It is an altitudinal migrant, breeding high up in Alpine regions.
Rock Pipits turn up inland near lakes and reservoirs, so confidently recognising a
Water Pipit at such a site is not necessarily straightforward. If you get too close, a Rock Pipit will probably flit along the shore, while a Water Pipit is likely to fly high up and go right across to the other side of the lake, usually necessitating a long walk back round to check it out!
The smaller, pale-legged, common Meadow Pipit calls a thin seep-seep, Rock Pipit gives a slurred, full feeesp; Water Pipit is somewhere in between: not easy.
Get a good view and it will look bold, upright, rather uniform greybrown above, basically whitish below. Look for a white stripe over the eye, a white bib outlined with grey-brown, and two whitish wing-bars. It is a cleaner, more grey-brown-and-whitish bird than the olive-brown-and-yellowish Rock Pipit, which has many more blurred streaks beneath. Water Pipits are great birds, well worth seeking out. Rob Hume