Click on thumbnails above to ENLARGE

     On the morning of 17 October 2005, I had been to the lighthouse to check out a warbler that had been found by my Assistant Warden Adrian George. Having trapped the bird and it been identified as a Reed Warbler, Adrian and I set off back to the Observatory while Jesse Wilkinson went to the south hide to count seabirds.

On our way off the south end we flushed a bird from our left side. I did not hear the bird call, but glanced quickly at it and called ‘Richard’s Pipit’. Just as I got my binoculars on the bird it landed. I was immediately struck by three things: one, I had not heard the bird call; two, the short tailed and slender appearance of the bird and three, the general pale look of the bird. My reaction to what I was looking at was to yell one or two expletives and say to AJG ‘that is a very pale bird!’ Adrian’s response was to ask why it was not a Tawny Pipit. I responded by saying  'the lores were pale and the bird was too dark, the question is, why is it not a Blyth’s Pipit?’. After stalking the bird to get within 20 Metres of it, I heard it call. The bird gave a short shrill ‘speew’ not the classic ‘schreep’ call generally associated with Richard’s Pipit. I was now convinced that I was watching Wales’s first Blyth’s Pipit. I asked AJG to make a wide circle of the bird and to fetch Jesse who had his camera with him. A few minutes later JW and AJG returned. Our attempts to obtain pictures were however in vain, as, when I approached the bird and appeared suddenly from behind some gorse then took flight and flew north and landed somewhere on the narrows about ¾ of a mile away. After a search of a couple of fields JW heard the bird call, and thought it had flown east towards the observatory. We set off in that direction and within minutes we had managed to relocate the bird on the stone wall outside the Observatory. Thankfully the bird began to settle down and allow us to approach again. I ran into my house grabbing my camera and my partner's Leica scope (mine was at the other end of the island in the seawatching hide!) and yelling upstairs to Emma ‘Blyth’s Pipit by Plas, get there quickly’. The bird was thankfully still where I had left it, feeding on a grassy wall. Jesse was taking some photographs and I began to do the same. I spent the next 30 minutes making notes and taking pictures. I then went to phone the news out. I got into the house and picked up the phone and was about to phone Birdline Wales’ Alan Davies and then put the phone down. At this point the enormity of the find hit me and I told myself to take a step back and slow down. I had not even considered up to now, whether I was making an enormous error and the bird was just an unusual Richard’s Pipit. I decided to go back and have another look at the bird before making the call. After all I had found a ‘Blyth’s-type’ pipit before in Orkney which many agreed with the identification, however when the bird was trapped biometrical data suggested that the bird was in fact a small race Richard’s Pipit (BB 89 p144-146). So this time I wanted to be doubly cautious. I returned to the field and I looked at the bird with a very critical eye and spent the next hour watching it checking and double checking all the relevant features. The bird was small, short tailed, had a short hind claw, and was calling similar to a flava wagtail ‘speew’ and giving a quiet ‘chep’ call. The bird was very pale looking, had very buff under parts, a very weak malar and very little streaking on the breast, and a very fine pointy bill. I tried and tried to convince myself the bird was not a Blyth’s Pipit but could not. From the moment I looked at the bird through my bins I had suspected the bird was a Blyth’s and was now ready to phone out the news as I was 99% sure I was right. At midday I called Simon Hugheston-Roberts and Reg Thorpe who both decided to make a dash from Caernarfon to Aberdaron to get on a supply boat that was sailing at 1400hrs. I also told Alan Davies but asked him not to release the news until others had seen the bird and agreed with my identification. Having made the call I was then worried that the bird would either disappear. AJG and I then began looking at recent pictures in birding magazines and listening to calls of Richard’s and Blyth’s on CD. I became a little happier, but had to ask AJG what he thought. He said he thought the bird sounded like a Blyth’s, but it wasn’t him putting his neck on the line! 

I then returned back to the bird and took more notes, but after about an hour a Merlin flushed the bird and it flew off to the south end. I also managed to make two recordings of the bird’s call during this hour. At about 1420hrs RT and SHR arrived and we looked all over the south end of the island. I showed RT my pictures and played him a recording of the bird’s call. He was gutted, especially as we had lost the bird. During a search of the fields near the Observatory we managed to re-locate the bird and both RT and SHR agreed that the bird was a Blyth’s Pipit. The bird continued to be very approachable, difficult to flush and continued to skulk through the grass, never strutting about in the manner of a Richard’s Pipit.

The following day I spent a further two hours watching the bird and made more notes on plumage, behaviour etc.

Shape, size, structure, jizz and behaviour.

My initial impression of the bird was a big pipit, though this was not so when the bird landed and was seen well. The bird did not show the large bulk and give the fat wagtail impression of Richard’s Pipit.

The bird was much shorter tailed and fairly slender, though was larger than nearby Meadow Pipits which it was associating with.

The whole structure of the bird was obviously different from Richard’s Pipit. There was no ‘gutsy’ feel to the bird and the whole jizz never shouted Richard’s Pipit. The bird always looked daintier and lighter than Richard’s Pipit and the bird crept furtively through the long grass in the manner that a Locustella warbler would. The bird never strutted around or stood upright like a Richard’s and had a much more horizontal stance even when out in the open on grass/earth walls. The bird regularly moved away from us with its head held low in a very unobtrusive way.

In flight the bird did not look long and pot-bellied like a Richard’s Pipit (ie ‘fat wagtail’ like). It had a very short tailed appearance and looked most un-like a large pipit. When the bird flew it looked very compact and sleek and not too dissimilar to Tree Pipit. The bird’s flight was not as strong and undulating as Richard’s. When the bird flew, it never hovered before landing, it always dropped into the grass like a stone! The bird was very tame and approachable and at times difficult to flush. Almost all Richard’s Pipits I have seen on the island have been very ‘skittish’ and do not allow close approach.

Plumage

The upperparts were a mid- to dark brown, with fairly heavy, even dark blackish/brown streaks, along with pale streaks between them, running the length of the mantle, giving a fairly contrasting look. The nape was greyish brown and lightly spotted slightly darker, (but not as obvious as crown or mantle) and gave a rather plain looking effect. The un-streaked nape broke up the streaking of the Mantle and the crown. The crown was rather neatly and uniformly, but strongly and heavily, streaked in the same way as the mantle, but the streaks were much finer than the mantle. There was no obvious streaking on the sides of the crown giving the bird an ‘eyebrowed’ effect which I have sometimes seen in Richard’s Pipit. Because of the plain looking, un-streaked nape contrasting with the dark streaked crown, the bird at times looked almost ‘capped’.

The face pattern was fairly striking, but very open looking. The bird had a pale buffish supercillium (which extended very weakly from in front to just behind the eye where it was a little more obvious), pale lores (eliminating Tawny Pipit) and a pale area below the eye. The ear coverts were a pale, un-streaked, tawny/buffish brown colour, bounded by a short, indistinctly fine, but dark moustachial stripe curving below the eye. There was also a very short fine dark eye-stripe.

The Malar stripe was very weak and indistinct. It never appeared bold as in Richard’s Pipit, and was not ‘club-ended’, forming the triangular patch as seen in Richard’s. It was broken, very fine and quite pale, terminating with a few indistinct streaks on the sides of the upper breast which then faded rapidly. The sub-moustachial stripe was creamy and the throat was white.

The underparts were wholly a creamy-buffish colour, and slightly warmer on the flanks and vent, almost becoming peachy. There was no contrasting white area as normally noted on the underside of Richard’s. The streaking on the upper breast was very fine and indistinct and at certain angles almost none existent.

The wings were fairly fresh. The bird’s tertials were dark brown with a narrow pale creamy buff fringe. The tips of the longest two tertials were closer together then the upper and central tertial. The primaries and tertials were of equal length. The primaries and secondaries were dark with a very narrow buffish brown fringe. The greater coverts were blackish brown becoming darker towards the tip. They were slightly paler than the median coverts and showed a buffish fringe and a white tip forming an obvious pale wing bar. The median coverts were all juvenile type with a dark pointed centre, and an even whitish fringe forming another obvious neat pale wing bar.

The tail was short. This was most noticeable in flight and when the bird was stationary. The tail extended about the same distance from the wing tip as the exposed length of the tertials. On several occasions whist watching the bird the pattern of the outer tail feathers was seen when the bird was preening and /or stretching. The outer tail feather was completely white. The second outermost tail feather showed a restricted area of white at the tip forming a triangular/oval shaped wedge extending to about one third of the length of the tail of the outer web.

The bill on the bird was fairly pointed and lacked the thrush-like qualities associated with Richard’s Pipit. The culmen was very slightly de-curved towards the tip but in general the bill looked short and weak and pointy; not too dissimilar to that of a Meadow Pipit. The colour of the bill was fleshy orange with a dark horn culmen and a dark tip to the lower mandible.

The legs never looked long and gangly like those of Richard’s Pipit. The tibia were fairly short and indistinct and not noticeably long. The width of the legs looked finer than Richard’s Pipit. The legs were a fleshy-straw colour, with the hind claw being slightly greyer. The length of the hind claw (which was seen when the bird was perched in bushes and on walls) was short. I noted at the time, the claw length appeared to be about the same length as the hind toe and was slightly curved. The claw did not appear long and lark-like as in Richard’s Pipit.

Calls

The bird was heard to give four distinct types of call. The most common was a quiet short shrill, but weak ‘shpew’ or ‘spiw’. This call was the most common call given when flushed. The bird did also give a soft ‘chep’ or ‘pep’ call which was the second most frequent call. There was also a ‘flava’ wagtail type call ‘psheoo’ which was sometimes joined with a ‘chep’ call (psheoo-chep-chep). When flushed by a Merlin the bird gave a buzzier ‘Bdzzzzz’ call, not too dissimilar to Red-throated Pipit but much shorter (one was present in the same field!)

Copyright © Steven Stansfield and Bardsey Bird & Field Observatory 2005