You may not be acquainted with the meadow pipit, but you will most probably have heard it and not realised you knew it all along! It looks a bit like a song thrush, and if you saw it in a photograph you could be forgiven for thinking it is one. In reality it is only slightly larger than a great tit. It’s their song that distinguishes them above all else, it’s truly unmistakeable, and it is one of the commonest songbirds in upland areas – it’s high piping call is a truly beautiful and evocative sound.
Both the male and female pipit are alike with pale grey or buff coloured under parts with bold streaks and spots on the breast and flanks. The upper part is a grey to olive brown colour with much darker streaks. The belly and outer tail feathers are white and the legs are a dull pink. The juvenile meadow pipit is a pinkish buff colour and doesn’t have the dark streaks of their older siblings.
The meadow pipit delivers its song during the bird’s fantastic aerial display, which consists of flying from a perch, rising upwards in a fluttering assent, and then parachuting downwards on half spread wings. It’s breathtaking to watch its almost suicidal plummet. The song comprises of a series of accelerating ‘tseep’ sounds as it rises, and then when it decelerates, it makes our sort of ‘tseut’ noise. But we’ve not finished yet – it then flourishes its finale with a loud trill to finish. It really is an unmistakable song and can be heard throughout the Peak District during the summer months. In the breeding season it has a fluttering parachute display and in winter they are quite gregarious and gather in small flocks, often visible among vegetation, suddenly flying up with their typical jerky flights all at once.
The meadow pipit feeds mainly on invertebrates; including spiders, moths, flies and beetles but it also eats seeds in autumn and winter. It also eats the seeds of grasses, sedges, rushes and heather. They breed in open country on moors and bogs, coastal marshes and heaths. The nest is on the ground, usually very well concealed and built entirely by the female. It consists of dry grass on the outer layers and then lined with finer grasses and any hair it can find stripped from plants. The pipit usually has between 3 to 5 eggs and the eggs hatch after 11 to 15 days, with the chicks fledging 10 to 14 days after that. Two broods are commonly raised in a yea – that’s if the cuckoo doesn’t ingratiate itself first. The meadow pipit falls foul to the cuckoo, and it is one of the species which is classed as the most important nest host for the burglar bird. If you ever come across a nest and it is empty of eggs of course, it is a very neat and tidy and immaculately put together.
The meadow pipit is mainly resident in Britain but sometimes winter in Spain, Portugal and Northern Africa . In spring and autumn there are large numbers of passage visitors and changes in farming practices have led to their being less rough grazing areas in the winter, which are blamed for the decline of the meadow pipit sadly . The numbers have been reducing in the UK since the mid-1970’s, and they are on the amber list of conservation concern with the RSPB.
It is quite rare to get a meadow pipit in your urban garden, unless you are lucky enough to live near open countryside. Here they can actually become a frequent visitor. It is more probable you will see them hopping through the hedgerows, or bobbing along dry stone walls of the White Peak, their plumage plain to see against the white of the limestone . Some have even been known to come to suburban parks and playing fields and they can become quite tame and inquisitive.
The meadow pipit is known to have nearly 2,000,000 breeding pairs in Britain and we are very fortunate to have quite a good number of those up here in Derbyshire. It can be found in much of the northern half of Europe and also North Western Asia, from south-eastern Greenland and Iceland to just east of Russia. It is also a resident of Ireland.
Old folk names to the pipit include ‘Chit Lark,’ ‘Peet Lark,’ ‘Tit Lark’ and ‘Ttitling’, these names refer to its small size and superficial similarity to a lark. It is commonly shortened locally to a ‘Mippit’
On the ground it is quite an undistinguished bird, often blending into its surroundings. At 4 1/2 to 15 cm long and about 15 to 22 g in weight it is quite small. But there’s certainly nothing diminutive about the meadow pipit when they are the giants of the sky showing off their vocal abilities. It’s in the sky when they are their most mesmerising, their call sending shivers up your spine, especially if the sun is warming your back. To see them rising up so quickly and so fast, high in the air until you can hardly see them, a mere speck in the distance is amazing enough. But somehow their song is all around you and they may as well be sat on your shoulder they seem so close. If you get to experience a pipit first hand, it will certainly create some happy holiday memories for you.