WHEATEAR 473 



desert countries. The geographical range of the wheatear is very 

 extensive, reaching in summer througliout central and northern Europe 

 and Asia across Bering Strait to Alaska, and also including the 

 elevated tracts of southern Europe. Moreover, some of these birds, 

 after passing over Iceland and the Shetlands, find suitable breeding- 

 grounds on the Greenland coast. In winter, vvheatears seek the 

 genial climate of northern Africa, Persia, the lower Himalaya, and 

 the plains of India. To the British Isles the species is mainly a 

 summer-visitor, arriving in March or April and departing in September 

 or October. In the southern and midland counties these birds nest 

 chiefly on downs and other uplands, but in the north their breeding- 

 stations are more widely distributed, and include the Shetlands and 

 Orkneys. The individuals which arrive in April are larger and 

 browner than the early comers, and it is the former which pass on 

 to breed in the Faroes and Greenland ; they are regarded as a 

 distinct race (S. oenantJie kiicorrhoiis). Open country is essential to 

 wheatears, so that the distribution of these birds in England is 

 necessarily very local. Occasionally, both in England and Ireland, 

 wheatears are seen in winter. Before departing they collect in large 

 flocks on the coasts. Although their main food is insects, they also 

 eat the small snails found so abundantly on many parts of the South 

 Downs. The nest, which is loosely made of dry grass, with a lining 

 of hair and feathers, may be built in a mere hollow in the grass of 

 the Downs, in a rabbit-burrow, a stone-heap, a chink in a stone wall, 

 or even an empty provision-tin. In this is laid a clutch of from 

 five to seven pale blue eggs, occasionally showing faint purplish dots ; 

 a second clutch being laid later in the season. A wheatear with the 

 head and neck partially white, and the tips of some of the wing- 

 coverts wholly so, was shot in Sussex in 1905. 



Of the isabelline wheatear {Saxicola isabellinus), which breeds in 

 northern Russia, Asia Minor, and Palestine, and winters in north- 

 eastern Africa and north-west India, a specimen was killed in Cumber- 

 land in the autumn of 1887. The species is very like the female of 

 the ordinary wheatear, but has a longer shank to the leg, and a broader 

 white lining to the wing-quills, 



A second species, the black-eared wheatear {Saxicola stapasina), of 

 which there is an eastern and a western race, occasionally straggles to 

 the south of England. The cock of the typical race may be recognised 

 by the rufous sandy colour of the head and back, and the jet black 

 under side of the wing and axillary feathers. This eastern race 

 commonly breeds in Greece and Palestine, The one known British 



