288 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Egg dates. — Alberta: 8 records, May 21 to June 19. 



California: 34 records, April 5 to July 17; 17 records, June 9 to 

 June 18, indicating the height of the season. 



Colorado: 30 records, May 2 to June 12; 18 records, May 18 to 

 June 4. 



New Mexico: 6 records, May 5 to June 6. 



OENANTHE OENANTHE OENANTHE (Linnaeus) 



EUROPEAN WHEATEAR 



Contributed by Bernard William Tucker 



HABITS 



The European wheatear is a bird of extremely wide distribution, 

 ranging across Europe and Asia and extending, in the words of the 

 A. O. U. Check-list, "to northern and east-central Alaska and south 

 to the mouth of the Yukon and the Pribilof Islands." With such a 

 range it might be expected to occur in widely varied types of surround- 

 ings, and this is in fact the case. Always a bird of open country, it 

 finds suitable breeding grounds from bare hillsides, downs, and rabbit 

 warrens in England to the steppes and highlands of Asia and the 

 Arctic barrens and hilltops of all three northern continents. 



In Alaska it seems especially to frequent the mountains and barren 

 hilltops. Dall (Dall and Bannister, 1869), who saw many at Nulato 

 in May, was informed by natives that they were abundant on the 

 dry, stony hilltops, where the reindeer congregate. In much the 

 same way Nelson (1887) was informed at St. Michael, Norton Sound, 

 that they were "common on the bare mountains in the interior, fre- 

 quenting the summer range of the Reindeer." Osgood (1909) records 

 that on August 7, the day after his arrival at the head of Seward 

 Creek, east-central Alaska, "a party of Wheatears, two adults and 

 several young, was found flitting about some rock piles near camp. 

 Thereafter one bird or more was seen on every trip into the higher 

 parts of the mountains." He observed that they frequented slides 

 and heaps of small broken rock almost exclusively. Dixon (1938) 

 gives particulars of its occurrence in the Mount McKinley National 

 Park in the Alaska Range. A male, one of a pair that was evidently 

 breeding, was collected on May 29, 1936, high up on a mountainside 

 1 ,000 feet above timberline. A young one barely able to fly was ob- 

 tained on July 14, 1926, at Copper Mountain, where two families 

 were subsequently seen, and in 1932, when they were numerous, nesting 

 pairs were seen at Sable Pass, Savage Canyon, and near Double 

 Mountain. In August of the same year several families were seen at 

 Highway Pass, along the highroad which was then under construction. 



Not much seems to be recorded about the habits of the wheatear 



