Spot The Difference

Distinguishing Mountain and African pipits in the field Mountain and non-breeding African pipits are frustratingly difficult to separate in the field when they occur in the same area. This happens from autumn to early spring, about six to seven months of the year. During this time the lower mandible of both species, a key identification feature, is fairly similar and differentiating the species becomes very tricky.

- Hugh Chittenden

The Mountain Pipit Anthus hoeschi is an intra-African migrant that breeds in high-altitude shrublands in eastern Lesotho. In late summer, when temperatures begin to drop in these sub-alpine montane areas, Mountain Pipits leave the shrublands and move to adjacent, lower-lying grassland habitats, where they occur with African Pipits A. cinnamomeus.

African Pipits breed in early spring and most complete their reproductive cycle by about November/December. It’s during this post-breeding period, when the Mountain Pipits have vacated the Lesotho mountains and arrived to co-occur in grasslands at lower levels with African Pipits, that separation of the species becomes challenging.