Olive-backed Pipit

Anthus hodgsoni Richmond, 1907 (1, 0)

Photo © Phil Woollen - Unst, Shetland, 5 October 2011

Ex BBRC species 31/12/2012

STATUS

Eastern Palearctic. Polytypic.

OVERVIEW

Initially unsure about submitting the record due to its extreme rarity, a chance discovery of a photograph at the British Birds office some years later, led to it being submitted, with acceptance as the first British record some thirty years after the event.

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RECORD

1). 1948 Pembrokeshire Skokholm, trapped, 14th to 18th April, photo.

(P. Conder, British Birds 72: 2-4, plate 1; BOURC (1980), Ibis 122: 565; Lovegrove, Williams & Williams, 1994; Donovan & Rees, 1994; Green & Roberts, 2004).

History P. J. Conder (1979) in British Birds, Vol. LXXII. pp. 2-4, says: 'A pipit was caught in the Garden Trap at Skokholm from 14th to 18th April 1948 by J. Keighley (now J. Jenkins) and P. J. Conder. It was unidentified at the time but after examination of the pipit skins in the Natural History Museum collection, P. J. Conder decided that the bird was an Olive-backed Pipit. Conder "hesitated to submit such an unusual record: not only a first for Britain, but of a little known species and at what seemed an extraordinary time of year for an Asiatic vagrant".'