The water pipit (Anthus spinoletta) is a small songbird which breeds in the mountains of Southern Europe and Southern Asia eastwards to China. It is a short-distance migrant; many birds move to lower altitudes or wet open lowlands in winter. In breeding plumage it has greyish-brown upperparts, weakly streaked with darker brown, and pale pink-buff underparts fading to whitish on the lower belly. The head is grey with a broad white eyebrow, and the outer tail feathers are white. The winter colours are duller, with more brown. Water pipits construct a cup-like nest on the ground under vegetation or in cliff crevices and lay four to six speckled greyish-white eggs, which hatch in about two weeks with about two more weeks until the chicks fledge. Although pipits occasionally catch insects in flight, they feed mainly on small invertebrates picked off the ground or vegetation, and also on some plant material. The species population is large and stable overall.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_pipit

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1853:

Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata premiered at La Fenice in Venice, but the performance was considered so bad that it caused him to revise portions of the opera. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_traviata

1930:

Organized by the Communist International, hundreds of thousands of people in major cities around the world marched to protest mass unemployment associated with the Great Depression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Unemployment_Day

1943:

World War II: National Liberation Front forces defeated Italian occupiers in the Battle of Fardykambos, a major sign of the Greek Resistance's growth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fardykambos

1967:

Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defected to the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Alliluyeva

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

periodic table: (chemistry) A tabular chart of the chemical elements according to their atomic numbers so that elements with similar properties are in the same group (column). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/periodic_table

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

When everything has to be right, something isn't.   --Stanisław Jerzy Lec https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Jerzy_Lec