A Water Pipet!

I saw a new bird for my life list today. Actually I saw it after my DH pointed it out to me, on a nature walk through a marsh in a local county park. A Water or American Pipet, which is a winter bird in Florida: breeds in the tundra. They look like a sparrow with a white stripe over the eye, the outer tail feathers are white and have dark streaking on the chest. The identifing feature is the constant bobbing of the tail, as they poke through shallow water. I had never seen a bird walk like that before, went home and identified in my Peterson's. A lifer makes my day. I also believe that I saw a Grey Kingbird which is a Florida bird, but it was too far away to be sure. It ducked into a hollow on the creek bank, when my DH made hawk cries, trying to get it to fly. The bird was no dummy, if there was a hawk around it was going to hide, not fly. My DH never learns to stop pretending to be a hawk, while we are bird watching.

This message was edited Mar 19, 2007 6:21 PM

American Pipits are on the move. I ran into a flock of them on Saturday.

Here is one photo.

Congratulations b !!

Good one!

American Pipit or Buff-bellied Pipit is what it's called now, it was split off from Water Pipit (from Europe and western Asia) as a separate species a few years ago

Resin

Resin: I'm showing my age. My Peterson's Field Guide was published in 1960 so it shows the two species as one. That's a great photo, and that's definately what I saw. If I hadn't seen the bobbing, I would have called it an unknown "sparrow".