A week of Wheatears

The oenanthe family of birds, the Wheatears, are amongst my favourites.  From early birding memories of seeing my first Northern Wheatear at White Coppice in Lancashire before I was 11 years old, to watching Black Wheatears on the roof of my former father-in-law's house in southern Spain, to encounters with vagrant birds in more recent birding experience, these birds are universally a delight.

The scientific name for the family, oenanthe, always confused me a little.  I studied ancient Koine Greek (and some Latin) at university and I thought I was mis-translating the word.  Ostensibly the name of a plant, the word is a composite of oinos (wine) and anthos (flower).  Oenanthe refers to the blossoming of the vines from which the ancient Greeks made their wine.  This has led to some speculation that the birds were named after the timing of their return migration from further south to the regions of the Greco-Roman territories; literally the bird that returns when the vines blossom.  For those of us that have watched Northern Wheatears on hilltops during howling March storms in flurries of snow, the name doesn't seem to fit so well, but the timing of migration means those birds pass through Greece during vine-season before arriving with us, and when you factor in that there are around 30 species of Wheatear and that many of these cross-over in terms of distribution around the eastern Mediterranean, our classic Northern bird is perhaps an outlier.  

Northern Wheatear is Oenanthe oenanthe, literally wine-flower, wine-flower, much more poetic than it's old English name, of which wheat ear is a bastardisation.  Wheat meaning "white" and ear a time and culture slipped pronunciation of "arse"; the Greek wineflower became the English Whitearse.  Somehow, that faint vulgarity fits the English appreciation of a bird that lives in intractable moorland and is found on wild coasts during migration.  That the first and best view of a Wheatear is often the white rump vanishing over a clump of grass or a rocky outcrop is the obvious origin of the name, and the black upside down T shaped black marking on the tail means that Northern Wheatear are not confused with other species.  Even within the Northern Wheatear there are variations or subspecies. The nominate race is what we tend to get in the UK, with a number of "Greenland" birds (Oenanthe oenanthe leucorhoa) that breed in Canada, Greenland and the Faroes also moving through if the wind is in the right direction.  A further variant is the Southern Northern Wheatear (a name I love) (Oenanthe oenanthe libanotica) that is found across Spain all the way to northwest China.  The fact that you can travel across the northern hemisphere and find a recognisable Whitearse from Canada to China makes me happy.

My own experiences of Wheatear in the hills of my patch and on passage across the exposed mud of the Mosses are linked to the ends of winter and the ends of summer.  A bird that I most often see as a harbinger of the change of seasons, Wheatear are early to arrive in spring and often late to leave.  But not as late as the rare Wheatears that we sometimes get in autumn, still appearing on our shores well into November.  This year has been an incredible year for Isabelline and Desert Wheatear, with more of the latter arriving than I can ever remember.   travelled to Lyme Regis in December 2025 on my last big twitch of the Big Year to see Desert Wheatear (on the same day as Lesser Crested Tern) but have caught up with two in autumn 2026 within a week.  

Desert Wheatear (Oenanthe deserti) are beautifully colourful birds.  The subtle sandy hues of the female are just as delicious in their own way as the vivid orange and black and white contrasts of the showier male.  The pale rump of this bird stands out above a solid black tail and the black borders of the wings at rest become arcs of greys and blacks as the bird sweeps away low over the desert scree.  Ordinarily we would see Desert Wheatears in their transitional plumages into winter drab, but the gorgeous male at Easington last week was clothed in finery befitting a bird found across the heat of the Middle East, the majestic range of habitats of India and the deserts of north Africa.  To see one hunkered down in the easterly winds near Spurn a week after seeing a young male bird on the beach at Cley was an unexpected treat.  

 

Less obviously lushly coloured than the Desert Wheatear is the Isabelline.  Isabelline as a colour reference has a colourful (sorry) story behind it.  Though our first confirmed reference to it is in Elizabeth I's closet as the colour of a lace or dress, it amuses me to acknowledge the origin of the colour from the apocryphal and unlikely story of Isabella I of Castille who, during the Siege of Granada in 1491, vowed not to change her undergarments until the city fell.  The siege was protracted, and Isabella was a woman of her word; hence the yellowing of her clothes.  I wish this story was true, though it seems a sad legacy for Isabella!  Whatever the origin, "Isabelline" refers to pale, sandy, yellowed colours, and the Isabelline Wheatear (Oenanthe isabellina) is exactly that.  When seen in the field it is a much paler bird than Desert Wheatear or the lightest Northern Wheatear.  Found from southern Russia east to Mongolia, south through Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq it winters in Africa and north west India. 

I missed my first Isabelline Wheatar in November 2022 at Uwchmynydd in Gwynedd, Wales.  The three hour drive through increasingly remote and beautifully extreme coastal scenery led to an otherworldly conjunction of sea and cliff and verdant growth on the stormy edge of the Irish Sea.  The wind howled in, and froth off the waves landed hundreds of metres inshore.  The Wheatear had been there for days, but had chosen to leave as I arrived.  No surprise in 40mph winds.  My first successful view of one was in Devon, on a day where I saw Laughing Gull at Slapton, and my first Cirl Buntings.  An Isabelline Wheatear on a little nature reserve in the driving rain was the absolute highlight of the trip, but I've never been so soaked in rain before or since.  My latest one, at Paull in East Yorkshire, was close in, feeding well under grey and stormy skies just before the rain kicked in.  The common thread of these sightings is that they occur between November and January, in late autumn or winter.  I find it a source of fascination that birds ike Isabelline and Desert Wheatears from such hot climates find their way to this temperate and damp island in our cold and wet seasons.

My first experince of a vagrant Oenante species was in November 2022 when a Pied Wheatear was present at the odd location of a skate park at Whitley Bay in Northumberland.  A gloriously bright and cold day with wind whipping off the North Sea, another feature of vagrant Wheatears was quickly apparent: they are no respecter of persons.  So many of the rare Wheatears I've seen over the years have been bold to the point of inconvenience from the point of view of a photographer, the bird being too close to focus on.  Perhaps the remote landscapes of their birth are so far from human habitation that they haven't really encountered us to be wary.  The Pied Wheatear at Whitley was confident enough to feed at out feet if we stood still, and all three Desert Wheatears and both Isabellines I've seen were similarly emboldened around people.  My latest encounter with Pied was different though, a skittish and relatively skulking bird at Sammy’s Point last week that took full advantage of its dark plumage to hide amongst beachside riprap and fly unobtrusively away, only the brief flashes of white rump as a clue to its location.

Oenanthe pleschanka breeds across Russia and the former Soviet states, the word "pleschanka" from the Russian meaning "bald spot" and referring to the bright white cap of the male.  The Pied Wheatears we get on passage here are almost always juveniles in much more toned down plumage than the bright summer males.  The thought that these birds were born somewhere upwards of 2000 metres in altitude above sea level in west Asia or the extreme east of Europe and found their way to the shorelines of the UK in easterly winds is the kind of fact that gives perspective on the huge movement of birds across significant sections of the globe.  

Perhaps one day I'll see eastern or western variants of Black-eared Wheatears, or maybe even a Black Wheatear here in the UK.  There are few smarter looking or charismatic families of birds, and the excitement of seeing a Northern Wheatear in the cold beginnings of spring is as much a jolt of happiness as winter finally relaxes its grip on the hills of my patch in the west Pennines as seeing a confiding rare Wheatear on the coast in the November gloom.  Here's to the wineflower, the whitearse, the harbingers of change on the hills.