296 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



undulating like that of so many small birds, but more often than not 

 one sees it fly for a short distance only, low over the ground with a 

 rather flitting action, to settle not far away on some little hillock or 

 low perch and repeat the performance if followed. In its pursuit of 

 insects it will sometimes hover in the air for a moment, and occasion- 

 ally where the air currents are favorable a more sustained hovering 

 has been observed as the bird prospects the ground for food. In 

 places where conditions permit, especially on migration, wheatears 

 have an inclination to take shelter underneath rocks or stones, or in 

 other holes and crannies. They will do this to avoid birds of prey and 

 other causes of alarm and will roost in such places when they can. 



Voice. — The note of the wheatear most commonly heard is the 

 scolding or alarm note, a hard chack-chack like two pebbles struck 

 together. This may be prefaced by a shriller note, weet-chack- 

 chack, and this should perhaps be regarded as a more definite alarm 

 note, regularly heard when the birds have young. The weet is also 

 used alone. The food call of the young, both before and after fledging, 

 is a tremulous, shivering wheeze or rattle, but well-grown young birds 

 have also a very distinct, twanging teek, and a not dissimilar note may 

 at times be heard from adults. The song, which may be heard in 

 England from the time of arrival to about mid-July, is a short, pleas- 

 antly modulated warble rather incongruously mixed with creaky or 

 rattling sounds often suggestive of a handful of little pebbles shaken 

 together. Imitations of other birds may sometimes be incorporated, 

 and these may on occasion be very good indeed, as has been especially 

 stressed by Saxby (1874) writing of wheatears in Shetland. Probably 

 it is largely an individual trait. The song is most characteristically 

 delivered in a little fluttering song-flight, in which the bird rises to no 

 great height and then glides down again with spread tail. But it is 

 also regularly uttered from some little eminence on the ground, such 

 as a clod or stone, from rocks, fences, stone walls, and the like, occasion- 

 ally from bushes or even telegraph wires, and in northern Europe also 

 from the tops of trees (see the preceding section), though over much 

 of its range this would be considered most unusual. Occasionally 

 the song may be heard at night. It is evident that on migration the 

 wheatear begins to sing only when approaching its breeding grounds, 

 for although Misses Baxter and Rintoul (1914), the well-known 

 Scottish ornithologists, record that birds on the spring passage are 

 frequently heard singing on the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, 

 song from migrants in the Mediterranean region has apparently never 

 been recorded. Nor does the species normally sing in the winter 

 quarters in Africa, as do some passerines, though Meiklejohn (1941) 

 has recorded one heard singing in Tanganyika on December 25. 



