The European rock pipit (Anthus petrosus), or simply rock pipit, is a species of small passerine bird that breeds in western Europe on rocky coasts. It has streaked greyish-brown upperparts and buff underparts, and is similar in appearance to other European pipits. There are two subspecies, of which the nominate is non-migratory, and the Fennoscandian one is migratory, wintering in shoreline habitats further west and south in Europe. The European rock pipit is territorial at least in the breeding season, and year-round where it is resident. Males will sometimes enter an adjacent territory to assist the resident in repelling an intruder, behaviour only otherwise known from the African fiddler crab.
European rock pipits construct a cup nest under coastal vegetation or in cliff crevices and lay four to six speckled pale grey eggs which hatch in about two weeks with a further 16 days to fledging. Although insects are occasionally caught in flight, the pipits feed mainly on small invertebrates picked off the rocks or from shallow water.
The European rock pipit may be hunted by birds of prey, infested by parasites such as fleas, or act as an involuntary host to the common cuckoo, but overall its population is large and stable, and it is therefore evaluated as a species of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Taxonomy and systematics
The family Motacillidae consists of the wagtails, pipits and longclaws. The largest of these groups is the pipits in the genus Anthus, which are typically brown-plumaged terrestrial insectivores. Their similar appearances have led to taxonomic problems; the European rock pipit and the buff-bellied pipit were considered subspecies of the water pipit until they were separated by the British Ornithologists' Union in 1998. The European rock pipit is closely related to the meadow, red-throated and rosy pipits as well as its former subspecies.
The first formal description naming this species was by English naturalist George Montagu in 1798. It had previously been described in 1766 by Thomas Pennant, in the first edition of British Zoology, although he did not distinguish it from the common titlark (meadow pipit). It was first shown to be different from that species by John Walcott in the 1789 edition of his Synopsis of British Birds, in which he called it the sea lark. John Latham was the first to give the European rock pipit a scientific name, Alauda obscura in 1790, but his name was an invalid homonym, the same name being used a year earlier by Gmelin for a different bird from Sardinia. In the same year, Montagu, whom Latham had consulted about the bird, found European rock pipits on the coast of South Wales, where it was known to some fishermen in the region as the "rock lark". He adopted that name for the species and gave it the scientific name Alauda petrosa.
The scientific name of the European rock pipit is from Latin. Anthus is the name given by Pliny the Elder to a small bird of grasslands, and the specific petrosus means "rocky", from petrus, "rock".
There are two recognised subspecies of the European rock pipit:
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! Image !! Subspecies !! Distribution
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|120px||Anthus petrosus petrosus (Montagu, 1798) – the nominate subspecies || breeds in the Faroe Islands, Ireland, Great Britain, northwest France and the Channel Islands; non-migratory
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|120px || Anthus petrosus littoralis Brehm, 1823 || breeds in Norway, Denmark, the Baltic Sea coasts, and far northwestern Russia; migratory, wintering on the coasts of western Europe from Scotland south to northwest Africa.
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The suggested subspecies A. p. kleinschmidti on the Faroe Islands, Shetland, and Orkney, A. p. meinertzhageni on South Uist, A. p. hesperianus on the Isle of Arran, and A. p. ponens in northwestern France cannot be reliably separated from the nominate subspecies and are now included in it. Immature birds resemble the adult, although they may sometimes be browner and more streaked above, Ringing results show that A. p. littoralis birds from Scandinavia winter widely within the breeding range of A. p. petrosus in Britain as well as further south in western Europe; they are sometimes, but not always, separated ecologically, tending to use more sheltered and muddier, less stony, coasts.
The European rock pipit is closely related to the water pipit and the meadow pipit, and is rather similar in appearance. Compared to the meadow pipit, the European rock pipit is darker, larger and longer-winged than its relative, and has dark, rather than pinkish-red, legs. The water pipit in winter plumage is also confusable with the European rock pipit, but has a strong supercilium and greyer upperparts; it is also typically much warier. The European rock pipit's dusky, rather than white, outer tail feathers are also a distinction from all its relatives. The habitats used by European rock and water pipits are completely separate in the breeding season, and there is little overlap even when birds are not nesting. The shrill pseep flight call is intermediate between the soft sip sip sip of the meadow pipit and the water pipit's short, thin fist. The European rock pipit is not troubled by wind or rain, although it avoids very exposed situations. It may occur further inland in winter or on migration.
Migratory populations leave their breeding grounds in September and October, returning from March onwards, although in the far north they may not arrive before May.
Eggs are laid from early to mid-April in Britain and Ireland, from mid-May in southern Scandinavia, and from June in the north. The nest is always close to the shore, in a cliff crevice or hole, or under the cover of vegetation. They are incubated for 14–16 days to hatching, almost entirely by the female, although males have been recorded as occasionally helping.
Feeding
The European rock pipit's feeding habitat is rocky coasts, rather than the damp grassland favoured by the water pipit. As with other members of its genus, it is a host of the common cuckoo, a brood parasite. Eggs laid by cuckoos that specialise in using pipits as their hosts are similar in appearance to those of the pipit.
The European rock pipit is also a host to the flea Ceratophyllus borealis, and several other flea species in the genera Ceratophyllus and Dasypsyllus. The Eurasian rock pipit can benefit from parasitism of the common periwinkle Littorina littoria by the castrating trematode Parorchis acanthus. Beaches can become attractive where the decline of the periwinkle results in more ungrazed algae, with corresponding increases in invertebrates and a greater diversity of smaller Littorina snails as food for the pipits.
Status
Estimates of the breeding population of the European rock pipit vary,