A strange looking pipit has been seen daily down on the foreshore for a couple of weeks now and has attracted quite a bit of attention with visitors coming in daily to ask about the cream pipit with orange legs they had seen.
Well at last someone has got some decent shots and Keith Hopson has kindly sent them over. Quite simply it is a Meadow Pipit that has a few pigmentation issues. It is very plain and almost unmarked and this particular abbarant plumage when the colours become pale cream or sandy brown is known as leucistic and is actually quite common in birds.
So how do we know that it is a Meadow Pipit and not a Rock or Water? Well, there are no actual plumage details to go so it is all down to the jizz of the bird which is typically small and compact, with a fine bill and thankfully that all too distinctive and rather insipid 'seep seep' call...
20-10-14