The water pipit (Anthus spinoletta) is a small passerine bird which breeds in the mountains of Southern Europe and the Palearctic eastwards to China. It is a short-distance migrant; many birds move to lower altitudes or wet open lowlands in winter.

The water pipit in breeding plumage has greyish-brown upperparts, weakly streaked with darker brown, and pale pink-buff underparts fading to whitish on the lower belly. The head is grey with a broad white supercilium ("eyebrow"), and the outer tail feathers are white. In winter, the head is grey-brown, the supercilium is duller, the upperparts are more streaked, and the underparts are white, streaked lightly with brown on the breast and flanks. There are only minor differences among the three subspecies, the sexes are almost identical, and young birds resemble adults. The water pipit's song is delivered from a perch or in flight, and consists of four or five blocks, each consisting of about six repetitions of a different short note.

Water pipits construct a cup-like nest on the ground under vegetation or in cliff crevices and lay four to six speckled grey-ish white eggs, which hatch in about two weeks with a further 14–15 days to fledging. Although pipits occasionally catch insects in flight, they feed mainly on small invertebrates picked off the ground or vegetation, and also some plant material.

The water 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 the three groups is the pipits, genus Anthus, which are typically brown-plumaged terrestrial insectivores. Their similar appearances have led to taxonomic problems; the water pipit and the buff-bellied pipit were both formerly considered subspecies of the European rock pipit. Of these, the rock pipit is the more closely related to the water pipit, based on external and molecular characteristics. Other near relatives are the meadow, red-throated and rosy pipits.

The water pipit was first described by Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae in 1758 as Alauda spinoletta (characterised as A. rectricibus fuscis : extimis duabus oblique dimidiato-albis). The current genus Anthus was created for the pipits by German naturalist Johann Matthäus Bechstein in 1805. Anthus is the Latin name for a small bird of grasslands, and the specific spinoletta is a local dialect word for a pipit from the Florence area of Italy.

thumb|Wintering Anthus spinoletta blakistoni at [[Tal Chhapar Sanctuary]]

There are three recognised subspecies of the water pipit:

  • Anthus spinoletta spinoletta, (Linnaeus, 1758), the nominate subspecies, breeds in the mountains of southern Europe from the Pyrenees eastwards to northwestern Turkey, and on Sardinia and Corsica.
  • Anthus spinoletta coutellii, Audouin, 1828,<!--By convention, this one doesn't have brackets, since it's the original name.--> breeds in the mountains of Turkey other than the northwest, the Caucasus, northern Iran and Turkmenistan. 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. There is also little mixing with breeding meadow pipits, although since 1960 some overlapping territories have been found where the species coexist.

Voice

The water pipit's song is delivered from a perch or in flight, and consists of four or five blocks, each consisting of about half a dozen repetitions of a different short note. The call of the water pipit is a single or double sharp "dzip" or similar, slightly harsher than soft sip sip sip of the meadow pipit or the shrill pseep of the European rock pipit. The short, thin fist flight call is intermediate between the sip of the meadow pipit and the rock pipit's feest.

The eggs are incubated by the female for 14–15 days to hatching. Chicks are fed initially by the male, both parents sharing the duty after a few days when the female does not need to brood so often, and they fledge in a further 14–15 days.

Feeding

thumb|[[Glacier fleas are a prey item found on snow fields]]

The water pipit's feeding habitat is damp grassland, rather than the rocky coasts favoured by the Eurasian rock pipit.

In areas with acidic soils, there is less calcium available, potentially leading to thinner egg shells. In such locations, pipits are more likely to select snails and similar prey with calcium-rich shells than is the case in limestone terrain.

Predators and parasites

The water pipit is hunted by birds of prey including Eleonora's falcon, and eggs and young may be taken by terrestrial predators including stoats and snakes.

A new species of feather mite, Proctophyllodes schwerinensis, was discovered on the water pipit, which is also a host to the fleas Ceratophyllus borealis and Dasypsyllus gallinulae. Along with other Motacillidae species, the water pipit is a host of the protozoan parasite Haemoproteus anthi.

Status

Estimates of the European breeding population of the water pipit vary widely, but may be as high as two million pairs, which would suggest a global population of tens of millions of individuals spread over .