Wagtails and pipits


Magnus Robb,
Lukas Pelikan &
The Sound Approach
NFC, Night flight calls
16th December 2020

Pipits and especially wagtails may not be the first birds that come to mind when talking about NFCs. Indeed, we tend to associate Motacillidae more with diurnal migration, when they can often be seen in large numbers. Among them the Tree Pipit Anthus trivialis, as a long-distance migrant, stands out as a species with a pronounced nocturnal component to its migration. Other pipits and wagtails also migrate partly at night, but we hear their NFCs far less often than those of Tree Pipit. Under certain conditions they may become more noticeable, especially towards the end of the night. Pipit and wagtail NFCs are essentially the same as their daytime flight calls but differ slightly in certain aspects at night, most notably the more frequent salvos of calls in many pipits and yellow wagtails, ie, two-note or three-note calls. A feature peculiar to pipits is that many species have calls where the fundamental frequency is suppressed to a minimum.