Sprague's Pipit

Anthus spragueii

Sings while spiraling so high you can barely see it. Audio delivery from 300 feet up.

Population: Approximately 1,400,000 mature individuals globally (BirdLife International/IUCN estimate), with a decreasing trend; North American Breeding Bird Survey data separately show roughly a 90% population loss since 1967
Habitat: Native short- and mixed-grass prairie of the northern Great Plains; requires large, unbroken tracts of undisturbed or lightly grazed grassland and largely avoids cropland, overgrazed pasture, or land with heavy shrub encroachment
Fun fact: Unlike most songbirds, the male Sprague's Pipit delivers its tinkling, high-pitched song not from a perch but from a sky-high circling flight that can reach roughly 300 feet above the prairie and sometimes last close to an hour, making the bird far easier to hear than to see.
Range: Breeds across the north-central Great Plains of south-central Canada (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba) and the north-central United States (Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota); winters in the southern US (e.g. Texas, Arizona) and northern Mexico
Diet: Mostly insects and other arthropods during the breeding season (grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, weevils, leafhoppers, ants, sawflies, moth and butterfly larvae, spiders); supplements with grass and forb seeds outside the breeding season
Size: 0.16 m
Wingspan: 0.254 m
Lifespan: 5 years

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