Red-throated Pipit in October 2025: 11 months later...

October 14th 2025 was a great day of birding on Bryher.  It was a windy, exciting autumn day and there had been a large fall of thrushes and common warblers on the island.  Flocks of Siskins, Linnets, Goldfinches were in every hedge and bramble, blackberries staining the faces of juvenile birds into interesting and exotic colouration making me twitch at every bird I got my bins on just in case it was something rare.  It's interesting how being in a place like the Scillies, Shetland, or other premier autumn rare locations can adjust your psychology.  The heightened expectation that a rare bird can turn up there much more easily than in the suburbs of Manchester makes you really look at every bird you see.  Normal patch birding has its share of passerines that flit away without a full ID, and they're almost always a Chiffchaff, a Meadow Pipit, a Blue Tit.  But on Scilly, every passerine is a potential rarity.  I dare say I've not been the only person to call a rarity from an everyday common bird species seen in strange light or location on the rocky shores of Bryher, and that was how I left one particular bird in the field - perhaps my overexcited expectation of October on Scilly dragging me to mis-identify a common bird as a rare.

I remember writing in the evening about the encounter with Michael Schmitz, a kind and talented German birder who had found a pale, cold-coloured Pipit in with a flock of hundreds of Meadow Pipits.  He flagged us down - we must have been the next birders along, or else he would have certainly been asking for someone better and more knowledgeable - to ask us to confirm his initial ID of an autumn Red-throated Pipit.  For much of the next half hour the Pipit was feeding amongst a mass of Meadow Pipits - easily into the multiple hundreds - and this was mixed with a movement of 60-odd constantly calling Pied Wagtails, to the backdrop of waves and waves of noisy Gold and Greenfinches, Siskins and Song Thrushes, European Blackbirds, not to mention a cacophony of gulls hanging in the wind.  Behind us was Bennett's Boat Yard with the ticking and knocking of sail ropes on masts, before us was the sea surging gamely at the craggy coast.  The wind swirled through a narrow gully between allotments and boat yard, rattling dried foliage and whipping away the excited words of a group of eight birders who were respectively talking themselves up to an ID of Red-throated Pipit, or trying to calm themselves down to an ID of pale Meadow Pipit.  

The mood was excited, and I couldn't make up my mind whether that was because this really was so obviously different to Meadow Pipits in the field and therefore everyone could tell it was going to be rare, or whether it was a bit of group over-hype, where we convince ourselves we've seen something rare because of the expectation of rarity on Scilly.  I was reminded of the passage from Ken Kaufmann's Kingbird Highway where he describes the pantheon of 1970s American birders flocking to see the rarity of a Spotted Redshank and all agreeing that the bird was indeed unmistakably a Spot Red, only for one person to see through the hype and clock it as a Yellowlegs that had been affected by an oil spill.  It can be easy to buy into the excitement of a crowd, is the point I'm making, and see what we want to see rather than what's there.  I saw the same thing with a Bonaparte's Gull earlier this year, some very good birders expecting to see one at a location where one had been consistently seen and taking and posting photos of a Black-headed Gull before hastily deleting their posts.  We've all been there, and I was worried I was there while watching this bird.

Trying to keep my own powder dry in the face of an excited group, I took two reasonable photos of the mystery bird, and privately thought that they matched an autumn Red-throated Pipit pretty well based on my frantic Googling and side-by-side fieldguide and BOC comparisons.  I certainly hadn't ever encountered a Meadow Pipit that cold, that monochrome, that stood out so very much from all the many and various shades of Meadow Pipit in the same field let alone in my wider experience.  I was not then, nor am I now, any kind of expert on Pipits, and my determination was to ask better birders for their view before coming down on one side or the other for definite.  We put the photo out to around 30 birders that we know and trust.  Response after response was, "looks good for Red-throated Pipit,", "RTP for me," "good find, Red-throat," and so on.  I was elated.  Then we got a single response that cast doubt.  Not someone I know, but someone who definitely has more experience than me (indeed, than most people) when it comes to rare birds.  "I can't see any features that I wouldn't expect from Meadow Pipit at this time of year."  And that was that.  Opinion turned.  Asked repeatedly if we'd heard it call we could only be honest and say not.  "Ahh, Red-throats call all the time.  Must be a Meadow."  I heard that maybe two dozen times that evening following the reluctance of the Scilly bird tally to accept it as RTP.  I accepted that my own ID was wrong, and consigned the mystery Pipit to history.

Sort of.  Privately, I have circled back a few times to wonder about this.  My hearing isn't brilliant, but even if it was, how would I have picked out a single Pipit call from the wind, waves, masts, Meadow Pipits, Pied Wagtails, gulls, thrushes, finches and people talking?  I could barely hear the person next to me talking to me, and I'm supposed to pick out the call of one Pipit feeding constantly?  The reality of in-field observation doesn't always allow us to have access to that one clinching ID feature, and if I'm honest, I was getting the feeling that if I'd been a big name in birding, I'd have been more quickly believed based on field observation and photographs without needing that call.  Being unable to definitively describe a call added to my lack of positive reputation as a finder of rare birds meant I probably wasn't being taken very seriously as I tried to back up Michael's submission as RTP.  I can certainly understand that - us newbies on the rare bird islands at peak migration are likely to make some errors borne out of enthusiasm and that psychological effect I wrote about above.  Nobody was rude, but gentle dismissal is still dismissal.

So the Pipit remained a Meadow, and the gentle poo-pooing of the Red-throat ID left me a little disheartened and with a desire to be back on patch where I don't struggle to identify rare birds.  Fast forward 11 months, and I receive a message from Owen, a photograph of the Scilly bird report summary for 2025.  Red-throated Pipit.  "One was on Bryher on Oct 14-16 (Michael Schmitz et al)."  Owen and I were two of those et als.  Michael's photo alongside the record was taken from 5 feet to my right, and I have a photo of the Pipit from almost the same second.  I'd kept my photos partly out of a feeling that it was so different to Meadow Pipit, and partly because if it was a Meadow then I wanted that education, to know just how varied common Pipits can be.

Hilarious.  A giddy little wave of relief that I hadn't totally embarrassed myself with a tentative ID of a rarity was my first reaction, and a silly triumphant addition to my Big Year list total (311, for those keeping count) was my second.  But what I'm left with largely is a feeling of reluctance to get involved in that again.  I completely understand and appreciate the scepticism of those responsible for the official records - what other option do they have, they certainly can't just take at face value every claim of a rare bird (even a quick look at the absolute nonsense that gets submitted to eBird in any area of the country is an education in winnowing the Isabelline Wheatear from the Iberian Chiffchaff), and I have no hinterland of rare bird records for them to consider.  This was a difficult ID of a bird I had no experience with, in conditions that made it hard to get the silver bullet ID feature, and the understandable but routine scepticism of more experienced birders because I'm not some rare bird Rain Man left me feeling frustrated at the time, even if I can't really argue for an alternative.  Still, though it took 11 months, I'm really happy to be able to say I've seen Red-throated Pipit, and I'm very pleased for Michael Schmitz that his find and ID, his persistence and systematic run down of the features of the bird has been accepted.  

11 months later I'm delighted to have seen Red-throated Pipit; I just hope I bloody hear the next one.