The Red-throated Pipit (Anthus cervinus) is a small, streaked pipit that breeds in the Swedish mountains and is a sought-after autumn passage migrant for birders in the south of the country. In breeding plumage adults — most obviously the male — show a brick-red to pinkish-red wash across the throat and upper breast, a feature no other Swedish pipit shows, making this the surest field mark. In autumn and winter plumage the red is absent, but the bird remains strongly and contrastingly streaked on the back and flanks, typically with a pair of clear pale lines along the back and a fairly heavily streaked rump, giving an overall impression of a neatly patterned, high-contrast pipit similar in size and shape to the Meadow Pipit.
The call is a sharp, slightly descending, drawn-out "psiih", harsher and more emphatic than the thinner, quieter call of the Meadow Pipit, and is often what gives away an overflying bird during autumn migration; the song, delivered in a falling display flight, is a clear, ringing strophe of repeated trilling notes. It breeds in the Swedish mountain districts, chiefly in Jämtland, Lappland, and northern Norrbotten, as a long-distance migrant arriving in May and leaving the mountains in August–September to winter in Africa and southern Asia; during migration, birds pass south and are seen annually as passage migrants in eastern and southern Sweden, including Skåne, Halland, and Öland. It nests on the ground, placing a cup-shaped nest well hidden among tussocks and low vegetation in damp mountain terrain, with a clutch of usually 5–6 eggs laid in June and typically a single brood per season; the female does most of the incubating while both parents feed the young, and the short subarctic summer leaves a narrow window in which breeding must be completed before the southward migration begins. It feeds on insects, spiders, and other invertebrates picked from the ground, supplemented by small seeds outside the breeding season, foraging on foot across mountain heath and damp areas of dwarf birch and willow.
Read about this species in Swedish →