Meadow Pipit

About the Meadow Pipit

The meadow pipit (Anthus pratensis) is a small passerine bird that breeds throughout much of the Palearctic, from south-eastern Greenland and Iceland east to just east of the Ural Mountains in Russia, and south to central France and Romania; an isolated population also occurs in the Caucasus Mountains. It is migratory over most of its range, wintering in southern Europe, North Africa, and south-western Asia, but is resident year-round in western Europe, although even here many birds move to the coast or lowlands in winter.

The meadow pipit was formally described by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Alauda pratensis. The type locality is Sweden. The meadow pipit is now the type species of the genus Anthus that was introduced in 1805 by German naturalist Johann Matthäus Bechstein. The species is monotypic; no subspecies are recognised.

The generic name Anthus is the Latin name for a small grassland bird mentioned by Pliny the Elder, and the specific name pratensis means "of a meadow ", from pratum, "meadow". The name "pipit", first documented by Thomas Pennant in 1768, is onomatopoeic, from the... Wikipedia →