I had to look at the pictures of the tree pipit so many times, before I realised, that one of them shows it with a grasshopper in its beak (third tree-pipit photo, added today)! Tree pipits and meadow pipits used to be common birds in Switzerland. Today, there are hardly any or even no breeding pairs at all left in the Mittelland-region where this observation took place. This may explain why this is the first tree pipit I have ever met in my life! The species suffers from loss of meadows with high vegetation and suitably high trees during the breeding season. The tree pipit on the picture was already on its way to western and eastern Africa, south of the Sahara desert. I hope that the insects of Küsnacht Wangensbach provided it with some extra energy for this dangerous long-distance migration!

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/136708103

Posted on October 12, 2022 08:34 PM by spyr