Whilst stood next to the Dorset Wildlife Trust centre waiting for the Snow Bunting to appear I noticed these little chaps crawling around on the sand in front of me.
Skylarks have every reason to look nervous and keep low because pretty much everything will have a go at eating them.
They were even a delicacy for our ancestors until not that long ago.
And of course they still eat lots of them on the continent.
Pipits are very similar but tend to run around more, being more active and streamlined.
This one is a Meadow Pipit, the commonest of the three or four species you are likely to see in the UK.
The Snow Bunting still hadn't appeared so I carried on filming pipits.
This one is a Rock Pipit.
Pretty similar I agree but they're not too difficult to tell apart once you get to know them.
Especially when you see them next to each other, as here
(the Rock Pipit's the one at the front).
It's not quite that easy though because the two pipits don't often feed in the same places, meadow pipits usually preferring to keep a bit further away from the shore than rock pipits.
And rock pipits are very variable in colour.
One thing they don't often tell you in bird books is that rock pipits sometimes change into a much brighter breeding plumage, like this one filmed at Portland Bill last April.