Yellowish Pipit

anthus lutescens

Motacillidae · Pipits

Disc 2 · 2001 listed
Disc 3 · 2006 listed
Disc 1 · 2011 listed

The account

Description

13 cm. The most common pipit in the area. Above brown streaked blackish and buff. Tail blackish with white outer tail feathers. Below yellowish white with blacks streaks across breast. Belly buff whitish.

The disc records this picture against the bird without a caption. Disc 3 · 2006

Where it was recorded

The discs' own checklists select Yellowish Pipit at 10 localities.

Historical checklist localities on the disc's own area map — the red dots the original program drew, placed by its recovered projection. Not a range map: it shows the places whose checklists record the bird, nothing more.

How the map was made

The original program computed each red dot at display time from the locality's coordinates, using its map library and one of five base maps drawn for the screen widths of the day. That library's projection — an oblique rotation of the sphere about the map's own centre, 23.7°S 47.4°W — was read from the program and checked against the graticule the same program drew into the base maps: it reproduces every grid intersection to within about a pixel. The dots here use that projection on the 1280-pixel base map, with the coordinates the discs record. Nothing was placed by hand, no modern map data was used, and a place whose coordinate is incomplete, out of range or beyond the map's edge is listed rather than guessed.

The discs carried location maps only; none shows a distribution or range.

Voice

Song delivered in flight, described as starting with a series of 'tsit' notes, when ascending in flight during song, ending with a slurred 'eeeeeu' during gliding down to the ground. However, in Southeast Brazil the introductory 'tsit' notes are not audible (vocalization # 1). This is also the case with songs from Bolivia (see Sjoerd Mayer, Birds of Bolivia 2.O). I have added for comparison the song of the subspecies peruvianus (vocalization # 2) which is a longer, more complex song that includes a row of 'tsit' notes at the beginning of the song. The slurred end note of Anthus lutescens peruvianus has a sound quality quite different from that given by Anthus lutescens lutescens. A 'tsitsirrit' call is delivered on the ground (¹³³)(vocalization # 3).

Behavior

Forages on the ground in grassy areas. Often in small groups.

Breeding

Breeds in Southeast Brazil (¹¹⁹). This pipit was commonly singing in March west of Cabo Frio, Estado Rio de Janeiro, suggesting that it breeds throughout the year (⁵³). No further information on breeding dates in Southeast Brazil.

Habitat and status

Quite common in a variety of open short grass habitats, airports, barren and grassy beach areas, especially close to water such as grassy borders of lagoons.

Distribution

Throughout. Up to 1300 meters

Decoded from the disc's own bytes. Each part is shown under the heading the disc files it under, and the wording, spelling and punctuation are the author's.

Vocalizations

Slurred 'eeeeeeu' during descent. Estancia Aipiranga, Santa Vitoria Palmar, Rio Grande do Sul, April 1, 1978, LNS20130, recorded by W. Belton.
Song, Lomas de Lachai, north of Lima, Peru. August, 1, 2000. This song of the ssp. peruvianus is significantly different from the song of the nominate race found in Brazil. Clearly, the slurred end note has a different sound character.
Calls, Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, Bolivia, lawn, April 3rd, 1994, recorded by Sjoerd Mayer.

Recording files on the disc

4589.mp3 Slurred 'eeeeeeu' during descent. Estancia Aipiranga, Santa Vitoria Palmar, Rio Grande do Sul, April 1, 1978, LNS20130, recorded by W. Belton.
7061.mp3 Song, Lomas de Lachai, north of Lima, Peru. August, 1, 2000. This song of the ssp. peruvianus is significantly different from the song of the nominate race found in Brazil. Clearly, the slurred end note has a different sound character.
1811.mp3 Calls, Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, Bolivia, lawn, April 3rd, 1994, recorded by Sjoerd Mayer.

Across the three discs

The work was published on three discs — Disc 2 in 2001, Disc 3 in 2006 and Disc 1 in 2011. Where they differ, that is a difference between historical releases, and it is never merged away. The 2011 disc is not treated as correcting the earlier ones.

Which discs list this bird

Disc 2 · 2001 — in this disc's bird list
Disc 3 · 2006 — in this disc's bird list
Disc 1 · 2011 — in this disc's bird list

How that was established

Disc 2 · 2001: aux_nonzero;local_checklist_byte45_flag_1
Disc 3 · 2006: aux_nonzero;local_checklist_byte45_flag_1
Disc 1 · 2011: aux_nonzero;local_checklist_byte45_flag_1

The disc's own record fields that place the bird on its list: a non-empty entry in the species table, and the byte that marks it as selected on a local checklist.

The account in the Disc 1 · 2011 revision

In the 2011 Disc 1 revision, part of this account was truncated at exactly 512 bytes (a 2011 mastering defect). The earlier releases preserve the complete text.

Truncated sections in the 2011 revision: voice. The complete earlier text is shown beneath each truncated section.

Description Disc 1 · 2011

Voice Disc 1 · 2011

Disc 1 (2011) text ends here — truncated at exactly 512 bytes in the 2011 mastering (historical defect, kept as recovered).

Complete earlier text — Disc 3 · 2006 (253 bytes lost in 2011)

Shown for comparison from the Disc 3 · 2006; it does not repair or replace the Disc 1 · 2011 historical text above.

Behavior Disc 1 · 2011