The Paddyfield Pipit in Britain

Lees, Alexander ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7603-9081, Batty, Chris and McInerny, Christopher (2022) The Paddyfield Pipit in Britain. British birds, 115 (5). pp. 250-260. ISSN 0007-0335

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Abstract

On 23rd October 2019, a large pipit Anthus sp. was discovered at Sennen, Cornwall, and remained at the site until 14th November 2019. Although the appearance of the bird was felt by observers to most closely resemble Richard’s Pipit A. richardi, the flight call was incorrect for this species. The bird was tentatively identified as a Paddyfield Pipit A. rufulus – potentially the first record of this species for Europe – based on the analysis of sound recordings. Subsequent analysis of photographs and, crucially, DNA recovered from faeces confirmed that the bird was indeed a Paddyfield Pipit. The range of the Paddyfield Pipit extends from the Indian subcontinent east to the Lesser Sundas and it has not been recorded from the Western Palearctic, the closest observations being two extralimital records from the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Therefore, as the Cornish individual was a potential first record for Britain and the Western Palearctic, the British Ornithologists’ Union Records Committee (BOURC) had to carefully consider its provenance to determine if it had a wild origin, a requirement for eligibility to Category A of the British List. After considerable deliberation, BOURC decided that there were sufficient doubts surrounding the bird’s origin and so placed the record in Category D. This paper describes the process that BOURC took to come to this conclusion.