Wheatear (species)

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Wheatear
Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe)

Wheatear ( Oenanthe oenanthe )

Systematics
Order : Passerines (Passeriformes)
Subordination : Songbirds (passeri)
Family : Flycatcher (Muscicapidae)
Subfamily : Schmätzer (Saxicolinae)
Genre : Wheatear ( Oenanthe )
Type : Wheatear
Scientific name
Oenanthe oenanthe
( Linnaeus , 1758)
Wheatear song, Dartmoor , Devon, 1966

The wheatear ( Oenanthe oenanthe ) is a bird art from the family of Fliegenschnäpperartigen (Muscicapidae).

female
Wheatear

description

The wheatear is 14.5 to 15.5 cm long and weighs between 22 and 28 g. The wingspan is between 26 and 32 cm. The males have in breeding plumage in the spring and summer, so a gray crown and gray back, a black eye stripe that up on the cheeks stretches and widens there something he acts like a mask. There is a white stripe above the black eye stripe. The breast is ocher, the belly white, the wings black. The females are similarly colored, just a little less contrasting because the black mask on the face is not as pronounced and the wings are more brown than black. The birds are very easy to recognize in flight by their characteristic black and white tail color: the white tail / rump has a black T-pattern at the tip. In the plain dress , the sexes are more similar, because the males are then somewhat more inconspicuous with a brown back and parting and a less pronounced mask.

Their call is a whistling hiiit , they often sing a chirping and crunching stanza from a rock, slightly elevated.

nutrition

Wheatears mainly eat insects, but also spiders, snails and earthworms. In autumn they also eat berries.

Habitat and bird migration

Distribution of wheatear:
  • Breeding areas
  • Wintering areas

    • Wheatears are widespread as breeding birds all over Europe, they are the only species of the genus Steinschmätzer that also occurs in Northern Europe. They occur mainly in the mountains, but also inhabit other landscapes, preferring open, stony terrain. They are rare in Germany. The birds overwinter in Africa.

    Outside of Europe, they are found in Canada and Alaska, Greenland and Siberia.

    Bird migration of the population in Alaska

    The population in Alaska flies over Northern Russia , Asia , the Caspian Sea to East Africa ( Sudan to Kenya ) and back , covering 30,000 km annually. The wheatear, so it could be determined with light and dark locators , flies for hours at a speed of approx. 50 km / h and covers 450 km per night on its long-distance route depending on the wind.

    Brood care

    Scrim ( Museum Wiesbaden Collection )

    The nest is a bowl loosely built between crevices or piles of stones. Five to six eggs are hatched. The incubation period is about 14 days, then the nestlings are fed by both parents for 15 days.

    Danger

    The wheatear is considered to be threatened with extinction in Germany (Red List Cat. 1). Worldwide the species is considered not endangered because of its large distribution area.

    literature

    • Franz Bairlein , D. Ryan Norris, Rolf Nagel, Marc Bulte, Christian C. Voigt, James W. Fox, David JT Hussell, Heiko Schmaljohann: Cross-hemisphere migration of a 25 g songbird. In: biology letters. The Royal Society, Received December 15, 2011. Accepted January 24, 2012. Online ISSN  1744-957X ( full text online )
    • Uwe Westphal : Weird birds. Encounters with the bittern, goat milker, hoopoe and other native bird species . pala-verlag, Darmstadt 2015, ISBN 978-3-89566-342-0 , pp. 89–92: Der Steinschmätzer .

    swell

    Web links

    Commons : Wheatear (Art)  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
    Wiktionary: Wheatear  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

    Individual evidence

    1. ↑ Rembert Unterstell: "We'll be gone." Fascination with bird migration: Inspired by modern research methods, ornithologists at the Wilhelmshaven Institute for Bird Research study the internal and external mechanisms of annual migration. Your new model is the little wheatear . In: forschung - The magazine of the German Research Foundation , October 4, 2013, pp. 10–13 ( online ).
    2. ↑ Christoph Grüneberg, Hans-Günther Bauer, Heiko Haupt, Ommo Hüppop, Torsten Ryslavy, Peter Südbeck: Red List of Germany's Breeding Birds , 5 version . In: German Council for Bird Protection (Hrsg.): Reports on bird protection . tape 52 , November 30, 2015.
    3. ↑ Oenanthe oenanthe. International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, accessed February 14, 2016 .