Males will sometimes enter an adjacent territory to assist the resident in repelling an intruder, behaviour only otherwise known from the African fiddler crab.

European rock pipits construct a cup nest under coastal vegetation or in cliff crevices and lay four to six speckled pale grey eggs which hatch in about two weeks with a further 16 days to fledging.

Although insects are occasionally caught in flight, the pipits feed mainly on small invertebrates picked off the rocks or from shallow water.

The European rock pipit may be hunted by birds of prey, infested by parasites such as fleas, or act as an involuntary host to the common cuckoo, but overall its population is large and stable, and it is therefore evaluated as a species of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Anthus is the name given by Pliny the Elder to a small bird of grasslands, and the specific petrosus means "rocky", from petrus, "rock".

[10][11][12] There is a geographical cline in appearance, with longer-billed, darker birds at the western end of the range, and shorter-billed, paler individuals in the east.

[15][16] Ringing results show that A. p. littoralis birds from Scandinavia winter widely within the breeding range of A. p. petrosus in Britain as well as further south in western Europe; they are sometimes, but not always, separated ecologically, tending to use more sheltered and muddier, less stony, coasts.

[19] The habitats used by European rock and water pipits are completely separate in the breeding season, and there is little overlap even when birds are not nesting.

[14] The European rock pipit's song is a sequence of about twenty tinkling cheepa notes followed by a rising series of thin gee calls, and finishing with a short trill.

[3] The breeding range is temperate and Arctic Europe on western and Baltic Sea coasts,[20] with a very small number sometimes nesting in Iceland.

A. p. littoralis is largely migratory, wintering on coasts from southern Scandinavia to southwest Europe, with a few reaching Morocco.

[15] Migratory populations leave their breeding grounds in September and October, returning from March onwards, although in the far north they may not arrive before May.

[22][23] Eggs are laid from early to mid-April in Britain and Ireland, from mid-May in southern Scandinavia, and from June in the north.

[19] The European rock pipit feeds mainly on invertebrates, seeking out most of its prey on foot, only occasionally flying to catch insects.

It will venture into shallow water as it follows retreating waves,[21] and may take advantage of human activity that exposes sea slaters or other species that hide under stones.

Amphipod larvae are important in Ireland and Scotland, crustaceans in Norway, and the mollusc Assiminea grayana in the Netherlands.

[31] The Eurasian rock pipit can benefit from parasitism of the common periwinkle Littorina littoria by the castrating trematode Parorchis acanthus.

Beaches can become attractive where the decline of the periwinkle results in more ungrazed algae, with corresponding increases in invertebrates and a greater diversity of smaller Littorina snails as food for the pipits.