Water Pipit City!

A walk across Neath saltmarsh with Mark Hipkin revealled how good this site is for Water Pipits. Although 4 were seen well enough to id to species, maybe as many as 15 birds were seen in total. Most typically only gave flight views, but a group of a dozen or more birds, all giving Water/Rock Pipit calls, showed white bellies and white outers in flight. 2-3 of these seen on the ground were indeed Water Pipits. Never seen so many together in our area!

Little Gull & Water Pipit at Penclawdd

Water Pipit showed very well on the slipway at Penclawdd car park (SS544958) this morning. This is not an easy species to get good views of as they tend to fly off high when approached, but today the car provided an effective hide allowing very good views for Neil Edwards and myself. When looking for this species, note that it is rarely seen at anytime other than high tide as they tend to remain concealed in the tidal creeks at other times. The winter distribution below (lime = Pre 2000, Green >= 2000, centred black = 2009) shows the species prefers the upper estuary, but note Rock Pipit also uses these same habitats when non-breeding.

Water Pipit

Rock Pipit

The first-winter Little Gull was highly mobile, moving between the northern and southern shores of the estuary and was last seen flying east towards Loughor Bridge.