Christine's walking & birds blog

Possible rock pipits have been seen on two hill-walks since we came to live here: on Cul Mor, 12th October 2016 at around 600 metres above sea level, and on Bla Bheinn, 2nd October 2019, at around 400 metres.

I've been a bit dubious about the ID, partly because I didn't see them that well (the first was in cloud, the second at some distance) and the pictures I got weren't good; and partly because rock pipits are generally seen as being tied to the seashore. But research has produced some interesting results.

The Wikipedia entry for Eurasian rock pipit states that "...on St. Kilda it breeds at up to 400m (1300ft)".

Birds of the Western Palearctic states: "Most 1st-year birds from Fair Isle leave in autumn, and move south to Scotland or even the Netherlands." Fair Isle breeders are apparently of the subspecies kleinschmidti - and the wikipedia site has a photo of an individual of this subspecies, which resembles my pipit even to the way it was first seen, crouching on a rock. Like any migrating bird, these presumably could be encountered anywhere. However, it was the only reference I found to this movement, with most authorities merely claiming that the rock pipit (apart from the Fennoscandian race littoralis) is largely sedentary in its habits but will sometimes move inland to rivers and lakes for winter.

My googling brought up the book Birds in Scotland by Valerie M. Thom (published 1986); and this passage was interesting: "...rock pipits....have been reliably reported at some altitude inland in recent years. They have been seen well inland in the breeding season in the Grampians, and apparently breeding at 300m asl on Skye and over 500m on Mull (R. Broad)."