34 BIRDS OF CHESHIRE. 
WHEATEAR. 
SAXICOLA CNANTHE (Linnzeus). 
Stonechat, Whiterump. 
Although a common summer visitor in the extreme 
east and west, the Wheatear is only known in the 
greater part of the county as a passing migrant in 
April and May. During these months it has been 
reported from many widely scattered places in the 
Cheshire Plain, and we have often met with it singly 
or in small parties on the meadows and ploughed lands 
of the Mersey Valley near Sale. On July 16th, 1899, 
Coward saw a Wheatear at High Legh, a locality 
remote from any known breeding-haunt of the bird, 
but there was nothing in its behaviour to suggest that 
it was nesting. 
In Wirral the Wheatear is a well-known summer 
visitor, nesting in some numbers on Hilbre Island. 
It also breeds in suitable places along the coast from 
Parkgate to the Frodsham Marshes, as well as on the 
higher ground at Heswall Hill. 
On the hills in Longdendale, where it is known as 
the ‘Stonechat, the Wheatear is plentiful, nesting in 
the stone walls. We have seen it in summer on 
Werneth Low, near Hyde; and once came across a 
pair which were nesting on an old pit-bank at Woodley. 
In Lyme Park it nests in rabbit-burrows, and thence 
to Bosley in the South and the Derbyshire border in 
the East it is plentiful up to the hilltops. At Rainow, 
Mr. N. Neave has generally remarked its arrival during 
the last week of March. 
