Probable Richard's Pipit

As already mentioned in my last blog post, I´ve seen a weird pipit with features of a Richard's Pipit. Especially its stature and behaviour indicated this species.

Richard's Pipits are seen regularly at the coast during October and November with a few individuals flying far into the inland sometimes even to Bavaria. It is however often only detected as a fly-over and then identified due to its characteristic sparrow-like call.

Back to the pipit I´ve seen: Generally it looked slimmer and notable bigger than the more common pipit species, at least in comparison to a nearby Green Woodpecker. Unfortunately I didn´t have much time for examining all features, so here is all what I could get:

- bill looks like a continuation of the drawn-out head

- conspicious light submoustachial stripe

- breast seems yellowish

- the pattern on the breast looks finer, shorter and less drop-shaped

- two whitish wingbars

- upright stature

- long-legged

Afterwards a car flushed the pipit and I wasn´t able to find the bird again in the dense grass. However it revealed to be pretty long-tailed and -winged. The wing tip was rather broad with the four outermost primaries being almost equally long.

Concerning only the common pipit-species I quickly came to a Richard's Pipit because the pattern of the breast doesn´t fit to any other pipit I know of. Still it must be taken in account that I have no practical experience with this species by now and that the yellowish tone of the breast is rather uncommon too. Nevertheless I would be grateful for any comment about this bird.