Water Pipits

On a cold, dank January day with the expectation of rain in the chill air, an excursion to RSPB Minsmere was greatly enlivened by watching Water Pipits from the Island Mere hide. These small winter visitors were taking advantage of the spoil left over from dredging work along the adjacent channels. The detritus from this essential maintenance activity had been piled up on the edges of the open water where these birds could probe around looking for snails and small insects, themselves now deprived of deep cover.

There was at least 2 birds stalking around the shallows, using their long slim beaks to prise morsels from the roots of reeds and other water plants. They strutted around coming quite close to the hide before generally being seen off by an aggressive female Pied Wagtail. 

It is not very often one gets the opportunity to have a prolonged look at a Water Pipit, thus many photographs were snapped and scrutiny made of the key features: overall pale look, white outer tail feathers, broad white supercilium, quite dark brown/orange legs, white throat bordered by spots that fade away as they reach the flanks, pale wing bars and so on. As with just about all small birds, there is quite a bit of variety in plumage, and the photographic images also show how a single pose can easily mislead. Even a series of images of a single bird can show, in each split second, a surprising change of features. From head on, the prominent supercilium is obvious, yet from an oblique profile shot it almost disappears. In some photographs the bird seems quite brown in overall tone, yet in others much paler. Just goes to show that reliance on a single image for identification can be very confusing and misleading. A video is a much better medium for conveying the totality of appearance.

Other birds on show today from this sparsely populated vantage point were a pair of delightful Whooper Swans that eventually came quite close, an elusive Water rail that would scurry out of cover, walk across the ice probing for titbits before swiftly disappearing into thick reed, and a Bittern that flew into the edge of the reed bed where it completely disappeared from view. A couple of Bearded Tits pinged, a Song Thrush briefly tried its luck on the strand line and a perky little Goldcrest zipped around amongst the tangle of fallen branches on the edge of the wood. In overall terms not a vast quantity of birds, but the quality was pleasingly high.