114 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



42. WHEATEAR. 



Saxicola cenanthe. 



The Wheatear is our earliest spring visitor, often 

 arriving in the first week of March, and almost always 

 to be found about the same day, year after year, in 

 or close to the same spot. In our immediate neigh- 

 bourhood it is by no means abundant, and I only 

 know of one breeding-place, but a little further north 

 it is much more common, and in some places on the 

 frontiers of Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, and 

 Rutland may be called abundant. Our old county 

 historian, Morton, says of the " Fallow Smich or 

 Wheat-Ear ((Enanthe sive Vitiflora, Aldrovand), there 

 are not only great numbers of them upon the 

 Downs in Sussex, as Mr. Willughby observes, but in 

 Northamptonshire too, and that not only in the Clay- 

 land fields as about Oxenden, but in those of a lighter 

 soil, as about Oundle, where some call them Clod- 

 hoppers. In our Red land they nest in forsaken 

 Coney burrows, and in the clefts or intervals of the 

 Keal and Quarry stone." The Wheatear loves open 

 country, dry moorlands divided by stone walls, rolling 

 downs, sandy rabbit-warrens, grassy mountain-sides 

 strewn with rocks and boulder-stones, and in such 

 localities I have met with it from the Land's End to 

 Inverness-shire. We generally see a few of these 

 birds early in September about our fallow fields, but 

 not in such numbers as the Whinchat, and their stay 

 with us at that season is even shorter than that of 

 the latter species. The Wheatear is a restless fidgety 

 bird, and very much enlivens some of the dreary 

 localities in which it is often found, as, for instance, 



