Rockits

It's ages since I've seen a nice Scandinavian Rock Pipit (Anthus petrosus littoralis) so when a handful were reported locally yesterday I earmarked the latter part of this afternoon to go and have a look for them. When I was an Axe patch regular we used to get them wintering on the upper estuary saltmarsh, and I assume that's still the case. However, there was a catch. In winter plumage they are not safely separable on plumage from the British race A p petrosus. Well, I say that...

Because of the Axe birds, some years ago I read everything I could find on the identification of littoralis Rock Pipits. At the time it appeared there was no 100% reliable way to identify them in winter; there is simply too much overlap with petrosus. [This may no longer be the case, and if that is so I would be very grateful to be pointed at the relevant paper/literature.] So on the Axe we basically had to wait until late February and March, when our upper estuary Rock Pipits began to don the summer garb of the Scandinavian subspecies, becoming less streaky below, and developing a greyer head and a warm, pinkish flush to the throat/upper breast. Based on the fact that this happened every year, I guess you could identify the winter birds as littoralis too, circumstantially anyway. I'll be honest though - I was never completely happy about that. We frequently had a wintering population of 10 or 15 birds, but personally I never saw anything like that many spring-plumaged individuals. Therefore I always felt it was an over-generous extrapolation to assume the whole lot were littoralis. However, that's because I'm a bit pedantic, and I'll freely admit that the birds present throughout the winter probably all were (and still are!) Scandinavian Rock Pipits.

Anyway, as I say, it's been many years since I've seen one of these striking spring birds and I was dead keen to reacquaint myself with the plumage. I headed out and scoured the area, eventually finding six birds - a single, and five together. Unfortunately, all I can say is that they were Rock Pipits, because none was showing the hoped-for signs of summery loveliness. Still, they're characterful little things, and if you sit still in the grass they prod about quite happily nearby. A few shots, showing at least three of the group of five...

Bird 1

Bird 1

Bird 1

Bird 2

Bird 2

Bird 3 - this one has a noticeably paler lower mandible than the two above.

The other two were a bit more distant and my photos aren't worth the bother, so instead have this friendly Pied Wagtail...

I counted at least 23 Pied Wags, with one or two quite 'moulty' like this bird. Unfortunately there were no White Wagtails among them.

Oops! I got so wrapped up in this post that I didn't notice the time. It's got dark, and I haven't yet deployed the nocmig kit...

Right. Sorted. Any long-term NQS readers will be aware that my fascination with nocmig began during last year's lockdown. At the time my approach was one of 'suck it and see', but well, I'm hooked now. So much so that I've splashed out a bit just recently...

New microphone! Below is my £25 cheapie; above is my new toy, which cost...er...more than that.

My recorder has the facility to run two mics simultaneously, so for a few nights I've been doing that. The results are quite eye-opening. More in a future post...