A bird on a tether, no matter how long the rope, can always be pulled back.

A Ronald Reagan quotation

Have you seen this bird?

American Pipit

The American Pipit (Anthus rubescens) is a small songbird found on both sides of the northern Pacific.

Identification Tips:
• Length: 5.5 inches
• Slender bill
• White eye ring and supercilium
• White throat with dark malar streak
• Brownish-olive upperparts with fine black streaks on back
• Wings blackish with broad buffy edges
• Buffy underparts with dark streaking across breast and onto flanks
• Black tail with white outer tail feathers
• Dark legs
• In Spring and Summer, less heavily streaked below and upperparts grayer
• Sexes similar
• Wags its tail
• Often found in flocks on the ground in sparsely vegetated areas (plowed fields, shores, tundra)

Similar species:
The American Pipit is similar to the Sprague’s Pipit but the Sprague’s Pipit has much less streaking on the underparts, more streaking on the back, a paler face, and pink legs. The rare Red-throated Pipit (breeds in Alaska and rare migrant in California) has a different call and pink legs. Sparrows and longspurs can be found in similar habitats but have thick, conical bills.

The American Pipit spends its winters on the Pacific coast of North America, and on the Atlantic coast from southern USA to Central America.

The American and Asian subspecies of the Puff-bellied Pipit are rare vagrants to Western and Eastern Europe, respectively.