Olive-backed Pipit - accepted records summary 2000 onwards

Anthus hodgsoni

British Birds Rarities Committee

2001 Pembrokeshire Skomer, 24th April (D.P.Boyle).

2002 Pembrokeshire Skomer, 22nd-23rd October (J.G.Brown, J.Darke, S.E.Duffield).

One at St Bride’s 22st -25th October 2018 was only the 4th county record. Accepted by WRP.

(The first for the UK was on Skokholm in April 1948 - see posting from Birds of Pembrokeshire, 1994).  

Olive-backed Pipit - 1994

Anthus hodgsoni

Vagrant

A pipit was caught in the Garden Trap at Skokholm from 14 to 18 April 1948 by J. Keighley (now J. Jenkins) and P.J. Conder. It was unidentified at the time but after examination of the pipit skins in the Natural History Museum collection P.J. Conder decided that the bird was an Olive-backed Pipit. Conder "hesitated to submit such an unusual record: not only a first for Britain and Ireland, but of a little-known species and at what seemed an extraordinary time of year for an Asiatic vagrant" (Conder 1979). When it was submitted to British Birds, in 1967, as an Olive-backed Pipit their answer was "probably but not sufficient evidence". The chance discovery of a photograph of the bird ten years later in the British Birds files led to a reassessment of the record and its acceptance as the first for Britain and Ireland.

Donovan J.W. & Rees G.H (1994), Birds of Pembrokeshire