Wagtails and pipits | Motacillidae

Kwikstaarten en piepers | Lavanderas y bisbitas | Wagtails and pipits

Slender, long-legged songbirds that walk rather than hop: the foot pushes off, the head nods with it, and the tail is pumped up and down from time to time. In the area of this guide the family is represented only by pipits: eight species of the genus Anthus, from the páramo and puna high in the Andes to grassland, fields and the coastal plain of Peru, and in the east also open grassland in the lowlands. The bill is thin, straight and pointed, made for picking insects off the ground; the leg is long and fine, and the claw of the hind toe is greatly lengthened, in many species nearly as long as the toe itself, which gives purchase in grass and sedge. Pipits are brown and streaked and hard to tell apart; call, song and display flight, the pattern of the back feathers and the outer tail feathers are the best features. The nest is a cup on the ground, hidden under a tussock, and in most species the song is delivered in the air: up, sing, and down again on a parachuting descent.