The European rock pipit (''Anthus petrosus''), or simply rock pipit, is a species of small
passerine
A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped') which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines generally have an anisodactyl arrangement of their ...
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
pipit
The pipits are a cosmopolitan genus, ''Anthus'', of small passerine birds with medium to long tails. Along with the wagtails and longclaws, the pipits make up the family Motacillidae. The genus is widespread, occurring across most of the world, ...
s. There are two subspecies, of which the nominate is
non-migratory, and the
Fennoscandia
__NOTOC__
Fennoscandia (Finnish language, Finnish, Swedish language, Swedish and ; ), or the Fennoscandian Peninsula, is a peninsula in Europe which includes the Scandinavian Peninsula, Scandinavian and Kola Peninsula, Kola peninsulas, mainland ...
n one is migratory, wintering in shoreline habitats further west and south in Europe. The European rock pipit is
territorial
A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, belonging or connected to a particular country, person, or animal.
In international politics, a territory is usually a geographic area which has not been granted the powers of self-government, ...
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
invertebrate
Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...
s picked off the rocks or from shallow water.
The European rock pipit may be hunted by
birds of prey
Birds of prey or predatory birds, also known as (although not the same as) raptors, are hypercarnivorous bird species that actively predation, hunt and feed on other vertebrates (mainly mammals, reptiles and smaller birds). In addition to speed ...
, infested by parasites such as
flea
Flea, the common name for the order (biology), order Siphonaptera, includes 2,500 species of small flightless insects that live as external parasites of mammals and birds. Fleas live by hematophagy, ingesting the blood of their hosts. Adult f ...
s, or act as an
involuntary host to the
common cuckoo
The cuckoo, common cuckoo, European cuckoo or Eurasian cuckoo (''Cuculus canorus'') is a member of the cuckoo order of birds, Cuculiformes, which includes the Geococcyx, roadrunners, the ani (bird), anis and the coucals.
This species is a widesp ...
, 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
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the stat ...
(IUCN).
Taxonomy and systematics
The family
Motacillidae
The wagtails, longclaws, and pipits are a family (biology), family, Motacillidae, of small passerine birds with medium to long tails. Around 70 species occur in five genus, genera. The longclaws are entirely restricted to the Afrotropics, and the ...
consists of the
wagtail
Wagtails are a group of passerine birds that form the genus ''Motacilla'' in the family Motacillidae. The common name and genus name are derived from their characteristic tail pumping behaviour. Together with the pipits and longclaws they form ...
s,
pipit
The pipits are a cosmopolitan genus, ''Anthus'', of small passerine birds with medium to long tails. Along with the wagtails and longclaws, the pipits make up the family Motacillidae. The genus is widespread, occurring across most of the world, ...
s and
longclaws. The largest of these groups is the pipits in the
genus
Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...
''Anthus'', which are typically brown-plumaged terrestrial
insectivore
file:Common brown robberfly with prey.jpg, A Asilidae, robber fly eating a hoverfly
An insectivore is a carnivore, carnivorous animal or plant which eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the Entomophagy ...
s. Their similar appearances have led to
taxonomic
280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy
Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme of classes (a taxonomy) and the allocation ...
problems; the European rock pipit and the
buff-bellied pipit were considered
subspecies
In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...
of the
water pipit until they were separated by the
British Ornithologists' Union
The British Ornithologists' Union (BOU) aims to encourage the study of birds (ornithology) around the world in order to understand their biology and aid their conservation. The BOU was founded in 1858 by Professor Alfred Newton, Henry Baker ...
in 1998.
The European rock pipit is closely related to the
meadow
A meadow ( ) is an open habitat or field, vegetated by grasses, herbs, and other non- woody plants. Trees or shrubs may sparsely populate meadows, as long as they maintain an open character. Meadows can occur naturally under favourable con ...
,
red-throated and
rosy pipits as well as its former subspecies.
The first formal description naming this species was by English
naturalist
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...
George Montagu in 1798.
It had previously been described in 1766 by
Thomas Pennant
Thomas Pennant (16 December 1798) was a Welsh natural history, naturalist, traveller, writer and antiquarian. He was born and lived his whole life at his family estate, Downing Hall, near Whitford, Flintshire, in Wales.
As a naturalist he had ...
, 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
In linguistics, homonyms are words which are either; '' homographs''—words that mean different things, but have the same spelling (regardless of pronunciation), or '' homophones''—words that mean different things, but have the same pronunciat ...
, the same name being used a year earlier by
Gmelin Gmelin may refer to:
* Karl Christian Gmelin, Carl Christian Gmelin (1762–1837), German botanist, author of ''Flora Badensis, Alsatica et confinium regionum cis- et transrhenania'' (1806)
* Charles Gmelin (1872–1950), British Olympic athlete
* ...
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
South Wales ( ) is a Regions of Wales, loosely defined region of Wales bordered by England to the east and mid Wales to the north. Generally considered to include the Historic counties of Wales, historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire ( ...
, 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
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
. ''Anthus'' is the name given by
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...
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:
[Svensson, L. (1992). ''Identification Guide to European Passerines''. British Trust for Ornithology, Thetford. .]
The suggested subspecies ''A. p. kleinschmidti'' on the Faroe Islands, Shetland, and Orkney, ''A. p. meinertzhageni'' on
South Uist
South Uist (, ; ) is the second-largest island of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. At the 2011 census, it had a usually resident population of 1,754: a decrease of 64 since 2001. The island, in common with the rest of the Hebrides, is one of the ...
, ''A. p. hesperianus'' on the
Isle of Arran
The Isle of Arran (; ) or simply Arran is an island off the west coast of Scotland. It is the largest island in the Firth of Clyde and the seventh-largest Scottish island, at . Counties of Scotland, Historically part of Buteshire, it is in the ...
, and ''A. p. ponens'' in northwestern France cannot be reliably separated from the nominate subspecies and are now included in it.
[ There is a geographical cline in appearance, with longer-billed, darker birds at the western end of the range, and shorter-billed, paler individuals in the east.]
Description
The European rock pipit is long and weighs . The nominate race has smoky-olive upperparts, weakly streaked with darker brown, and buff underparts, heavily marked with poorly defined brown streaks. The legs, bill and iris are dark brown or blackish, and there is a pale eye-ring. The sexes are alike; although males average slightly brighter than females, the overlap is complete and birds cannot be sexed on appearance or measurements. Immature birds resemble the adult, although they may sometimes be browner and more streaked above, looking superficially similar to meadow pipits.
The eastern subspecies ''A. p. littoralis'' can only be reliably distinguished from the nominate subspecies in summer plumage, when it may show pinkish underparts and a pale supercilium
The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head.Dunn and Alderfer (2006), p. 10 Also k ...
(eyebrow), thereby resembling the water pipit. European rock pipits in winter are readily distinguishable from water pipits, but very difficult to assign to subspecies by appearance or measurements. The western populations are known to be nearly sedentary, so east of the Elbe
The Elbe ( ; ; or ''Elv''; Upper Sorbian, Upper and , ) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Republic), then Ge ...
basin vagrant Eurasian rock pipits are presumably mostly ''littoralis''. 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. Virtually all rock pipits in southeastern England (where ''A. p. petrosus'' does not breed) are ''A. p. littoralis''.
Adult European rock pipits have a complete moult
In biology, moulting (British English), or molting (American English), also known as sloughing, shedding, or in many invertebrates, ecdysis, is a process by which an animal casts off parts of its body to serve some beneficial purpose, either at ...
in August–September, at which time juveniles replace their body and some wing covert feather
A covert feather or tectrix on a bird is one of a set of feathers, called coverts (or ''tectrices''), which cover other feathers. The coverts help to smooth airflow over the wings and tail.
Ear coverts
The ear coverts are small feathers behind t ...
s, giving them an appearance very like the adults. From late January to early March there is a partial moult and individually variable moult of some body and wing covert feathers, and sometimes the central tail feathers.
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 European rock pipit's song is a sequence of about twenty tinkling ''cheepa'' notes followed by a rising series of thin ''gee'' calls, and finishing with a short trill
TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is a networking protocol for optimizing bandwidth and resilience in Ethernet networks, implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and ...
. 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''.
Distribution and habitat
The European rock pipit is almost entirely coastal, frequenting rocky areas typically below , although on St Kilda it breeds at up to . 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.
The breeding range is temperate
In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (approximately 23.5° to 66.5° N/S of the Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ran ...
and Arctic
The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...
Europe on western and Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...
coasts, with a very small number sometimes nesting in Iceland. The nominate race is largely resident, with only limited movement. ''A. p. littoralis'' is largely migratory, wintering on coasts from southern Scandinavia to southwest Europe, with a few reaching Morocco. Wanderers have reached Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian language, Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipel ...
and the Canary Islands
The Canary Islands (; ) or Canaries are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean and the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, Autonomous Community of Spain. They are located in the northwest of Africa, with the closest point to the cont ...
, but records in Europe away from the coast are rare. For example, a male shot at Dresden
Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...
in 1894, now in the collection of the local State Museum of Zoology, is the sole specimen for Saxony
Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...
.
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.
Behaviour
The European rock pipit is a much more approachable bird than the water pipit. If startled, it flies a fairly short distance, close to the ground, before it alights, whereas its relative is warier and flies some distance before landing again. Eurasian rock pipits are usually solitary, only occasionally forming small flocks.
File:Faroe Island.1.bird.jpg, ''A. p. petrosus'' on Suðuroy
Suðuroy (pronounced: �suːwʊrɔior �suːri ‘South Island’, ) is the southernmost of the Faroe Islands. The island covers 163.7 square kilometres (63.2 sq mi). In 2018 the population was 4,601. Suðuroy region ( sýsla) comprise ...
, Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands ( ) (alt. the Faroes) are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean and an autonomous territory of the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. Located between Iceland, Norway, and the United Kingdom, the islands have a populat ...
File:Anthus_petrosus.jpg, ''Anthus petrosus'' at Ringstead Bay, Dorset
Dorset ( ; Archaism, archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north and the north-east, Hampshire to the east, t ...
File:Anthus_petrosus02.jpg, ''Anthus petrosus'' at Swanage
Swanage () is a coastal town and civil parish in the south east of Dorset, England. It is at the eastern end of the Isle of Purbeck and one of its two towns, approximately south of Poole and east of Dorchester, Dorset, Dorchester. In the Unit ...
, Wales
Breeding
The European rock pipit is highly territorial in the breeding season, and throughout the year where it is resident. Breeding males have a song display in which they fly to above the ground, then circle or descend to the ground with a fluttering "parachute" flight. Territorial males will sometimes enter the territory of an adjacent male to cooperate in evicting an intruder. This behaviour, which requires the ability to distinguish the resident from the intruder, is only otherwise known from the African fiddler crab.
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. It is constructed by the female from seaweed
Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of ''Rhodophyta'' (red), '' Phaeophyta'' (brown) and ''Chlorophyta'' (green) macroalgae. Seaweed species such as ...
and dead grass, and lined with finer fibres or hair.
The clutch is four to six eggs, glossy pale grey with darker grey or olive speckles mainly at the wider end. They measure and weigh , of which 5% is shell. They are incubated for 14–16 days to hatching, almost entirely by the female, although males have been recorded as occasionally helping. The naked altricial
Precocial species in birds and mammals are those in which the young are relatively mature and mobile from the moment of birth or hatching. They are normally nidifugous, meaning that they leave the nest shortly after birth or hatching. Altricial ...
chicks are brooded by the female and fledge
Fledging is the stage in a flying animal's life between egg, hatching or birth and becoming capable of flight.
This term is most frequently applied to birds, but is also used for bats. For altricial birds, those that spend more time in vulnera ...
in about 16 days. Both parents may feed the chicks for several days after fledging. There may be two broods in a year in the south of the pipit's range, and just one further north.
In a British survey, a hatching rate of 82% and a fledging rate of 78% gave an overall 58% nesting success, with an average 2.5 surviving young per pair. In contrast, a study in northwestern France found juvenile mortality was nearly 70%. The average lifespan is not recorded, although the maximum recorded age is 10.9 years.
Feeding
The European rock pipit's feeding habitat is rocky coast
A coast (coastline, shoreline, seashore) is the land next to the sea or the line that forms the boundary between the land and the ocean or a lake. Coasts are influenced by the topography of the surrounding landscape and by aquatic erosion, su ...
s, rather than the damp grassland
A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominance (ecology), dominated by grasses (Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes such as clover, and other Herbaceo ...
favoured by the water pipit. The European rock pipit feeds mainly on invertebrate
Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...
s, seeking out most of its prey on foot, only occasionally flying to catch insects. It will venture into shallow water as it follows retreating waves, and may take advantage of human activity that exposes sea slaters or other species that hide under stones.
Food items include snails
A snail is a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial molluscs, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gas ...
, worms
The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) is a taxonomic database that aims to provide an authoritative and comprehensive catalogue and list of names of marine organisms.
Content
The content of the registry is edited and maintained by scien ...
, small crustacean
Crustaceans (from Latin meaning: "those with shells" or "crusted ones") are invertebrate animals that constitute one group of arthropods that are traditionally a part of the subphylum Crustacea (), a large, diverse group of mainly aquatic arthrop ...
s, flies
Flies are insects of the Order (biology), order Diptera, the name being derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwin ...
and beetle
Beetles are insects that form the Taxonomic rank, order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Holometabola. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 40 ...
s. The proportions of each prey species vary with season and locality. Amphipod
Amphipoda () is an order of malacostracan crustaceans with no carapace and generally with laterally compressed bodies. Amphipods () range in size from and are mostly detritivores or scavengers. There are more than 10,700 amphipod species cur ...
larva
A larva (; : larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into their next life stage. Animals with indirect development such as insects, some arachnids, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase ...
e are important in Ireland and Scotland, crustaceans in Norway, and the mollusc
Mollusca is a phylum of protostome, protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 76,000 extant taxon, extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum ...
'' Assiminea grayana'' in the Netherlands. Small fish are occasionally eaten, and in hard weather pipits may scavenge for other food, including human food litter. There is little competition from other species for food, since rocky beach specialists like the purple sandpiper
The purple sandpiper (''Calidris maritima'') is a small shorebird in the sandpiper family Scolopacidae. This is a hardy sandpiper that breeds in the arctic and subarctic regions of Eurasia and North America and winters further south on the Atlan ...
take slightly larger food items, and may wade in deeper water. When food is abundant, meadow pipits may also feed on the shore, but are driven away by the European rock pipits when there is less prey available.
Predators and parasites
The European rock pipit is hunted by birds of prey
Birds of prey or predatory birds, also known as (although not the same as) raptors, are hypercarnivorous bird species that actively predation, hunt and feed on other vertebrates (mainly mammals, reptiles and smaller birds). In addition to speed ...
including the Eurasian sparrowhawk
The Eurasian sparrowhawk (''Accipiter nisus''), also known as the northern sparrowhawk or simply the sparrowhawk, is a small bird of prey in the family Accipitridae. Adult male Eurasian sparrowhawks have bluish grey upperparts and orange-barred ...
. As with other members of its genus, it is a host of the common cuckoo
The cuckoo, common cuckoo, European cuckoo or Eurasian cuckoo (''Cuculus canorus'') is a member of the cuckoo order of birds, Cuculiformes, which includes the Geococcyx, roadrunners, the ani (bird), anis and the coucals.
This species is a widesp ...
, a brood parasite
Brood may refer to:
Nature
* Brood, a collective term for offspring
* Brooding, the incubation of bird eggs by their parents
* Bee brood, the young of a beehive
* Individual broods of North American periodical cicadas:
** Brood X, the largest ...
. 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
Flea, the common name for the order (biology), order Siphonaptera, includes 2,500 species of small flightless insects that live as external parasites of mammals and birds. Fleas live by hematophagy, ingesting the blood of their hosts. Adult f ...
''Ceratophyllus borealis
''Ceratophyllus borealis '', also known as the boreal flea, is an ectoparasite of birds. It is a black species found on ground-nesting birds such as pipits, wheatears and wagtail
Wagtails are a group of passerine birds that form the genus ' ...
'', and several other flea species in the genera
Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family as used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial s ...
'' Ceratophyllus'' and '' Dasypsyllus''. The Eurasian rock pipit can benefit from parasitism of the common periwinkle
The common periwinkle or winkle (''Littorina littorea'') is a species of small edible whelk or sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc that has gills and an operculum, and is classified within the family Littorinidae, the periwinkles.
This is a ...
''Littorina littoria'' by the castrating trematode
Trematoda is a Class (biology), class of flatworms known as trematodes, and commonly as flukes. They are obligate parasite, obligate Endoparasites, internal parasites with a complex biological life cycle, life cycle requiring at least two Host ( ...
'' Parorchis acanthus''. Beaches can become attractive where the decline of the periwinkle results in more ungrazed alga
Algae ( , ; : alga ) is an informal term for any organisms of a large and diverse group of photosynthetic organisms that are not plants, and includes species from multiple distinct clades. Such organisms range from unicellular microalgae, suc ...
e, with corresponding increases in invertebrates and a greater diversity of smaller ''Littorina
''Littorina'' is a genus of small sea snails, marine (ocean), marine gastropod molluscs in the family (biology), family Littorinidae, the winkles or periwinkles.WoRMS (2011). Littorina Férussac, 1822. Accessed through: World Register of Marine ...
'' snails as food for the pipits.
Status
Estimates of the breeding population of the European rock pipit vary, but may be as high as 408,000 pairs, of which around 300,000 pairs are in Norway. Despite slight declines in the British population and some range expansion in Finland, the population is considered overall to be large and stable, and for this reason it is evaluated as a species of least concern by the IUCN
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status ...
.
Breeding densities vary from 0.9–6 pairs/km (1.4–9.7 pairs/mi) of coast depending on the quality of the habitat. There are few threats, although oil spill
An oil spill is the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially the marine ecosystem, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. The term is usually given to marine oil spills, where oil is released into th ...
s can temporarily reduce the invertebrate population of affected rocky coasts.
Notes
References
External links
Xeno-canto: audio recordings of the European rock pipit
{{Taxonbar, from=Q642685
Anthus
Birds described in 1798
Birds of Europe
Birds of Scandinavia
Pipits and wagtails
Taxa named by George Montagu (naturalist)