Sprague's Pipit

About the Sprague's Pipit

Sprague's Pipit is one of North America's most secretive grassland birds, a pale, scaly-backed pipit that walks alone through native prairie and almost never perches up in the open. Most encounters amount to a bird exploding from underfoot, giving a squeaky flight call, and dropping back into grass fifty yards away, invisible again.

On its northern prairie breeding grounds the male performs one of the longest display flights of any bird, singing in circles high overhead for up to an hour. In winter it depends on well-managed native grassland in Texas, which makes it a flagship species for prairie conservation.

Getting this bird in the open at Windy Point on Lake Travis was a rare piece of pipit luck.