Water Pipit (Anthus spinoletta) [XC844564]
by Paul Kelly from Arrondissement du Blanc (near M\u00e9zi\u00e8res-en-Brenne), Indre, Centre-Val de Loire, France (flight call)
Water Pipit (Anthus) [XC181342]
by Jerome Fischer from Garmisch-Partenkirchen (near Grainau), Upper Bavaria, Bavaria, Germany (song)
Subspecies
Possibly forms a clade with Meadow Pipit (Anthus pratensis), Rosy Pipit (Anthus roseatus), Red-throated Pipit (Anthus cervinus), Rock Pipit (Anthus petrosus) and American Pipit (Anthus rubescens). May form a superspecies, and until recently treated as conspecific, with Rock Pipit (Anthus petrosus) and American Pipit (Anthus rubescens). Birds from north-western Caucasus sometimes separated as subspecies caucasicus, but considered inseparable from coutellii.
The following 3 subspecies are recognised:
spinoletta (Linnaeus, 1758) - Breeds in mountains of central and southern Europe. Winters western and southern Europe and north-western Africa.
coutellii Audouin, 1826 - Breeds north, southern and eastern Turkey, Caucasus and mountains of northern Iran and Turkmenistan (Kopet Dagh). Winters in neighbouring lowlands and south to north-eastern Africa and Arabia.
blakistoni Swinhoe, 1863 - Breeds in mountains of southern Russia (east to Transbaikalia), Mongolia, eastern Kazakhstan, Tadjikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and north-western and central China (western Xinjiang, Qinghai); migrates to Pakistan, north-western India and southern China.