American Pipit

Overview

American Pipit: Small pipit, gray-brown upperparts and pale buff underparts; breast is faintly to darkly streaked. Tail is dark with white edges. Black bill is thin and long. Legs and feet are black. It can be distinguished from sparrows by its longer bill and habit of wagging its tail up and down.

Range and Habitat

American Pipit: Breeds from northern Alaska, Mackenzie, Canadian Arctic islands, and Newfoundland, south in mountains to California, New Mexico, and northern New Hampshire. Spends winters across the southern states and north to British Columbia and southern New England. Preferred habitats include Arctic and alpine tundra, beaches, barren fields, agricultural lands, and golf courses.

INTERESTING FACTS

Global warming may allow these birds to winter farther north than previously, but it also may reduce and fragment existing breeding areas.
The absence of a breeding species of pipits in the open country of the eastern United States is due to the fact that until recently forests covered this area.
The American Pipit was long known as the Water Pipit. Recent studies have shown that the three North American subspecies, along with the most eastern Asiatic one, are best regarded as a distinct species.
They feed on insects on the edges of tundra puddles, and in alpine meadows they visit unmelted snowbanks. Warm air rising from valleys below transports insects to high altitudes; most of these die and are frozen in snowbanks, providing food for the pipits.

The American Pipit can be found in a variety of countries around the world, despite its name. Not only is it found in North America and Central American but it can also be found in Korea, Pakistan, Taiwan, India and Japan. The range of this species of bird is about 10 million square kilometers. There is currently not any serious concern regarding the outlook for this species of bird due to the fact that it has a global population of about 22 million individual birds. In 2000, the evaluation rating of the American Pipit was at a Lower Risk.