African Pipit Anthus cinnamomeus Scientific name definitions

A common pipit of eastern and southern Africa, with an isolated population (A. c. camaroonensis) in the highlands of western Cameroon, the African Pipit is a well-marked pipit with heavily streaked upperparts and breast, contrasting facial stripes, and white outer tail feathers in most populations. It occupies open grasslands, grassy lake edges, fallow fields and other agricultural land, and recently burned areas, where it walks or runs on the ground searching for small invertebrates, often with a rather upright posture. Southern populations are migratory, with birds breeding in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana moving north to Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Mozambique during the non-breeding season.

The taxonomy and relationships of the pipits are complicated, and African Pipit was formerly treated as conspecific with Richard's Pipit (Anthus richardi), Australasian Pipit (A. novaeseelandiae), and Paddyfield Pipit (A. rufulus). In a comprehensive molecular phylogeny of pipits, Pietersen et al. (1 Pietersen, D. W., A. E. Mckechnie, R. Jansen, I. T. Little, and A. D. S. Bastos (2019). Multi-locus phylogeny of African Pipits and longclaws (Aves: Motacillidae) highlights taxonomic inconsistencies. Ibis 161:781-792 Close ) found that African Pipit belonged to a clade of "large-bodied" pipits, which included species from Africa, Eurasia, and Australasia. In this large and diverse clade, African Pipit appeared to be sister to Paddyfield Pipit and Richard's Pipit.