wheatear

any small northern songbird of the genus Oenanthe, esp O. oenanthe, a species having a pale grey back, black wings and tail, white rump, and pale brown underparts: subfamily Turdinae (thrushes)

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Wheatear

any bird of the genus Oenanthe, family Turdidae (thrushes). Its size is that of a sparrow to that of a starling. It has a thin beak that is broad at the base and strong, long legs.

Wheatears are found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. They inhabit open places in plains or mountains. They move along the ground by hopping. Their nests are built in ravines, rock streams, crevices in cliffs, buildings, and old rodent burrows. Wheatears are insectivorous migratory birds. A clutch contains four to eight light blue eggs. In the USSR there are seven species. The common wheatear (O. oenanthe) is found almost everywhere throughout the country. The desert wheatear (O. deserti), black-eared wheatear (O. hispánica), Isabelline wheatear (O. isabellina), Indian pied wheatear (O. picata), (O. finschii), and red-rumped wheatear (O. xanthoprymna) are found in the southern part of the European USSR (including the Caucasus), Kazakhstan, Middle Asia, and Southern Siberia.

A. S. MAL’CHEVSKII

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References in periodicals archive

Wheatear is a corruption of "white rear", which reflects the large white rump which is obvious when the bird takes to the air.

GO WILDWITH ERIC PAYLOR

The Northern Wheatear is a species of Old World origin that breeds in open country and in cold and hot treeless habitats throughout Eurasia and south to about 30[degrees]N in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula (Kren and Zoerb, 1997; Cramp, 1998).

Double brooding by the Northern Wheatear on Baffin Island

Among other twenty-plusers are the yellowhammer, the nightjar--another Hardy star as the dewfall-hawk--and the wheatear.

Ode to a clodhopper

The bird is a desert wheatear, which is a rare vagrant to this country in autumn.

GO WILDWITH ERIC PAYLOR

This was anything but unprepossessing to a Hume's Wheatear for whom "mountain slopes and ...boulder strewn barren hills with scant vegetation" are bread and butter.

Surprise Element

And that was enough to get scores of twitchers lining up on the esplanade, eager to snap the first Pied Wheatear recorded on Teesside for 22 years, and only the second one ever.

Twitter brings the twitchers out in force

In the meantime, we've compiled a Stumpy XI - with a healthy Boro contingent - which would give any team a run for their money: Goalkeeper: Dave Pheasant; Defenders: Dan Gosling, Parrot Southgate, David Wheatear and Dickie Rooks; Midfield: Craig Cygnet, Raheem Starling, Chris Eagles and Swan Mata; Striker: Bernie Raven and, Mikkel Peck; Subs: Uwe Clucks, Gareth Quail and Viktor Kingfischer; Managers: Goose Hiddink/Louis van Gull/ Manuel Peregrin-i

Sick as a parrot? Not Stumpy... he's one of Boro's biggest fans

A late Greenland wheatear was at Porth Nobla on the 20th.

I'M FORTUNATE to spend [...]

| Elsewhere, Chiffchaffs and Sand Martins arrived in several places last week, and spring's first Wheatear was spotted near Aberdaron last Friday.

BIRD NOTES With Julian Hughes

This wheatear was spotted at South Gare by Brian Elliott |of Billingham

What it really means to be in foster care

A reader in Llandudno Junction spotted a redwing in his garden at the weekend, another early winter arrival; it was sharing the ground-space with a late-running wheatear, itself a garden rarity.

IF we wanted to [...]

Of those species surveyed the worst performers are snipe, meadow pipit, brambling, willow tit, lapwing, thrush, nightingale, wood warbler, nutcracker, northern wheatear and lesser spotted woodpecker.

The birds flying in the face of climate change; But species suffer as the world warms