A fascinating songbird found in alpine and wetland habitats across Europe and Asia.
A water pipit (Anthus spinoletta) is a small, brown bird that can be found foraging for insects near water bodies, such as ponds, streams, and marshes.
They often bob their tails up and down as they walk, which is how they got their name.
What does a water pipit look like?
As well as being rare, the Water Pipit is also very tricky to identify. It is basically rock pipit like (large, robust, long blackish legs, overall dark), but with meadow pipit pretensions, such as white outer tail feathers and a pale stripe over the eye.
Something amazing happens in early spring, though. The water pipit acquires a slate-grey head, the white supercilium burnishes white, and a gorgeous rosaceous wash adorns the breast. This stunning makeover resembles a person suddenly scrubbing up for an important event, such as a date.
Water pipit habitat and distribution
While it may be rare, it’s also highly intriguing. Bearing in mind that it winters in lowland freshwater and coastal marshes, as well as its favourite stakeout, watercress beds, where do you think it might spend the summer?
The answer is remarkable – it’s in the high mountains of central and southern Europe, in alpine pastures mainly between 1400-2500m (higher than anywhere in Britain). That means – drumroll – that birds visiting Britain migrate NORTH in autumn, which is, of course, the “wrong direction.”
However, because the migrants are coming down from a height, they may go in any direction, a feature of “altitudinal migration”.
What do water pipits eat?
The water pipit’s diet isn’t as unusual as that of the rock pipit, containing mostly small insects, but it does have a taste for algae in some regions.
What does the water pipit call sound like?
The call is even a cross between meadow and rock (but this leaks into the realms of hardcore birding).
Where do water pipits nest?
It breeds on the ground, sometimes at the end of burrows, way up in the mountains. Bad weather forces it to feed more frequently and travel further to find what it needs, but it is a tough cookie.
What’s the water pipit population?
200-300 individuals.
What’s their conservation status?
Amber.
Want to find out more about our feathered friends?
Check out our expert guides to tree pipits, garden birds, robins, blackbirds, tit species and British finches, as well as how to make a log bird feeder.