The American Pipit, first described by Tunstall (1771), has a moderately distinctive flight call, which is given both diurnally and during migration. It could be confused for a Horned Lark, at times, and should be approached with caution. It will migrate through Vermont, and is most often seen in the fall (Murin and Pfeiffer 2004), on the way from its breeding grounds in the Arctic to its wintering grounds in the southern USA and central America. Several seasonal NFC stations noted this bird in the fall with more frequency than in the spring (Howe, Evans, and Wolf 2002, Evans 2012, Seymour 2013).
Evans and O'Brien (2002):
A high, squeaky "jeep" or "jyeet-it", delivered singly or in a well-spaced series. More excited birds will give a run-together "jyeet-it-it-it-it", etc. All calls occur in two distinct pitches.
Sanders (2013), drawing from Evans and O'Brien (2002), notes:
Lightening bolt shaped downward slur with a second low frequency down sweep
And a length of 70mS. However, she detected none for her thesis's dataset, and has no original spectrograms.
Pieplow (2017), of the tew call, which matches Evans and O'Brien's (2002) note:
High, sharp downslurs, clear but not very musical. 105 notes, often just two. Tew call: All year, most common call. Plastic, but consecutive calls fairly consistent in pitch and pattern, unlike similar calls of Horned Lark.
Dunne (2006):
Says its name. Call is a high-pitched sip-it (more emphatic than the call of Horned Lark); when flushed, emits a single chee or chee, chee, chee, and sometimes a whispered chih.
Sibley (2016):
Flight call a high, thin, squeaky slip or slip-ip.
This is also references as the same in Dunn and Aderfer (2011), by Toochin, Hamel, and Hearne.
King (1983), writes of the Pipit known then as the Water Pipit:
The flight call is a thin, sharp peet or pit or chip or pi-pit or chip-it or pi-pi-pi-pit.
Hendricks and Verbeek (2020) note that the Water Pipit was split from the American Pipit due partially to "vocal" differences. They also note of the American Pipit flight call:
A single pip-it, given on the ground and in the air.
They also note that it is "silent at night" and that there are "no good quality sonograms available for this species."
Walton and Lawson (1994):
The flight call is a repeated, two-note pipit-pipit.
Willmott, Forcey, and Hooton (2015) identify five American Pipits offshore, but only say that the calls were identified by experts, and give no further notes on the methodology of identification. Evans (2012), Howe, Evans, and Wolf (2002), and Seymour (2013) all identify American Pipits using algorithms now in Vesper and information from Evans and O'Brien (2002).
This call is a good example of the flight call.
Other calls:
This section may not be helpful. The idea is to make it easier to rule out other species more easily without going through the whole list, which may not be possible.
The following species were noted as being similar by the cited experts. Any notes underneath the species can be used to rule out the other species for particular calls.
When describing this call in comments on an NFC checklist, try and add as many salient notes as possible and refer to this page for justification. If there are any species which seem similar, please get in touch so we can add them here. The intent here is to have a full list of differences for each possible similar call.
All notes for species are coming from Evans and O'Brien (2002), unless where noted.
Evans and O'Brien (2002) write:
Sprague's Pipit is similar but slightly lower with more complex or more arched notes. Also, Sprague's does not give a double note or multiple notes run together. Instead, excited birds will give a fast series of separate single notes.
This bird is very unlikely to be migrating through Vermont, and has never been identified here.
Pieplow (2017) notes this as similar, but the call given in Evans and O'Brien is polyphonic and, in legnth, looks much longer and similar to other Sparrow calls. I can't understand how this could be confused when looking at the spectrogram.
This bird is very unlikely to be migrating through Vermont, and has never been identified here.
The zeee call, which is presumably what Pieplow (2017) was comparing to the Horned Lark, has not been heard in migration (Evans and O'Brien 2002). It also looks polyphonic and has heavy modulation.
Note that this was not given as having a tew call, but described as having a similar call on the species page. The Horned Lark is noted as being extremely plastic by Pieplow (2017), and some of the descending calls - for instance, the syp from Evans and O'Brien (2002) make it seem that this warrants future study. The jagged nature of the Pipit calls seems distinctive in comparison, and the length is generally around 70mS from looking at the spectrograms, while the Horned Lark seer call can be over 100mS (Evans and O'Brien 2002). Some calls may be able to be confused.