My little m'pits

Meadow Pipit (Tommy Holden)

I don't know about you but I find it very difficult to suss juvenile Meadow Pipits from their identical parents. This morning at 5.30am I was surveying the grassland at The Scrubs trying to ascertain the number of broods at large.

Judging from the number of singing males in April I estimated that there could be between 4-7 pairs breeding in our tiny 20 acre grassland. The landscape looks very different now. The vegetation has shot up to conceal a lot of the pipit activity. In 6 years I have only observed a juvenile being fed by an adult just once. However, recently I saw one bird carrying a faecal sac and another with food items. So breeding is occurring. This is heartening, especially given the amount of disturbance that this site gets on an average day.

I'm immensely proud of my pipits. Wormwood Scrubs potentially has the closest breeding colony to central London and has more breeding pairs than the far far larger Richmond Park a few miles to the south of us. Long may that continue.