Olive-backed Pipit

The olive-backed pipit, sometimes called the Indian, Hodgson's or tree pipit because of its resemblance to the tree pipit, is a small pipit about 15 cm long, greenish-brown above streaked with darker brown and whitish to buff below with dark brown streaks on the breast and flanks. It breeds across southern, north-central and eastern Asia and north-eastern European Russia, in summer from Himalayan Pakistan and India through Nepal into China, north to Gansu and east through Korea to Japan, up to 4,500 m in eastern Nepal (Wikipedia, general species account).

It breeds in open woodland and scrub, making a cup of moss and grass on the ground under a grass tuft or boulder, with three to five, usually four, dark brown spotted eggs. The song, uttered on the wing, is lark-like and similar to the tree pipit's but faster and higher pitched. SoIB 2023 rates it a High conservation priority, a within-India migrant and winter migrant with a Large range of about 550,000 km², a rapid long-term decline of about 66% and a current decline of about 4% a year (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).