The New Zealand pipit was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[3] Gmelin based his account on the "New Zealand lark" that had been described and illustrated in 1783 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his multi-volume work A General Synopsis of Birds.

[4] The naturalist Joseph Banks had provided Latham with a painting of the bird by Georg Forster who had accompanied James Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific Ocean.

Forster's picture was drawn from a specimen collected at Queen Charlotte Sound, a fiord on the northwest corner of New Zealand's South Island.

The birds' numbers have declined in parts of New Zealand due to the improvement of pastures, use of pesticides and predation by introduced species.