The red-throated pipit (''Anthus cervinus'') is a 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 are distinguished from other orders of birds by th ...

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

,which breeds in the far north of Europe and the

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Si ...

, with a foothold in northern

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S ...

. It is a long-distance migrant, moving in winter to Africa,

South South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...

and

East Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea ...

and the West Coast United States. It is a vagrant to Western Europe.

Etymology

The scientific name is from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

. The generic name ''Anthus'' is the name for a small bird of grasslands, and the specific name ''cervinus'' means "stag-coloured", from ''cervus'', "

stag Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reind ...

Description

This is a small

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 ...

, with an adult easily identified in the breeding season by its brick-red face and throat. In other plumages, this is an undistinguished-looking species, heavily streaked brown above, with whitish mantle stripes, and with black markings on a white background below. It is very similar in appearance to the

meadow pipit The meadow pipit (''Anthus pratensis'') is a small passerine bird, which breeds in much of the Palearctic, from southeastern Greenland and Iceland east to just east of the Ural Mountains in Russia, and south to central France and Romania; an isol ...

, and in the autumn, it much resembles the

tree pipit The tree pipit (''Anthus trivialis'') is a small passerine bird which breeds across most of Europe and the Palearctic as far East as the East Siberian Mountains. It is a long-distance migrant moving in winter to Africa and southern Asia. The sc ...

, but has an altogether more striped appearance because of the larger numbers of streaks on the cap, back, flank, rump, and chest. The flight of the red-throated pipit is strong and direct, and it gives a characteristic ''psii'' call as it flies.

Behaviour

The red-throated pipit is native to the boreal regions of Northern Europe and Asia. The breeding habitat is open country including mountains, marshland, and tundra. The nest is built on the ground, often beside a tussock of grass, on rough grassland, or on a hummock in a marsh. It is made of dry grasses and sedges with a soft lining of reindeer hair or down. Four to six eggs are laid and incubated by the female for nearly two weeks. The young are fledged and ready to leave the nest about 12 days later. The red-throated pipit is insectivorous, like its relatives, but also eats seeds.

Status

The red-throated pipit has a very large range and the global population has been estimated to be about two million individuals. It is rated as being of

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. Th ...

by the IUCN, as its population is believed to be stable, and it faces no particular threats.

Gallery

File:Anthus cervinus by pdsoki.jpg, Red-throated pipit Image:Red-throated Pipit.ogv, Thumamah, KSA 1992

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q241347 red-throated pipit Birds of Russia Birds of Scandinavia Birds of Africa Articles containing video clips red-throated pipit Holarctic birds