Any long suffering visitors to this blog, with incredibly good memories, will remember an entry on 13th April which included a Mystery bird flying over.. Passerine, average wing and tail proportions, not many visible clues but had a "buzzy" flight call. Well yesterday, it suddenly dawned on me that it was a Tree Pipit! Really obvious in hindsight, but not something that entered my mind back in april.

Also, after reading the text in Lars Jonsson's (sp.) Birds of Europe, I'm a bit happier with the very scruffy Pipit I saw in the Purbecks a couple of weeks ago, and eventually concluded was a Tree Pipit.. Birds of Europe goes into a bit more detail for the alarm call.. a Tsup, (with two dots above the "u"! ) which sounds about right, but a call that I haven't got on any of my CD's. Thinking about it, in my experiences it is quite unusual to see a Pipit sit on top of a bush repeating it's alarm call for several minutes.. most take flight at the first sight of you, utter a couple of calls if you are lucky, and disappear over the horizon! So I have completed a hat trick of Tree Pipits this year.. the full song, a flyover call, and an alarm call. Just need to remember them all for next year now!

Cheers,

Peter