The wheatears are passerine birds of the genus Oenanthe. They were formerly considered to be members of the thrush family, Turdidae, but are now more commonly placed in the flycatcher family, Muscicapidae. This is an Old World group, but the northern wheatear has established a foothold in eastern Canada and Greenland and in western Canada and Alaska.
Taxonomy The genus Oenanthe was introduced by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1816 with Oenanthe leucura, the black wheatear, as the type species. The genus formerly included fewer species but molecular phylogenetic studies of birds in the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae found that the genus Cercomela was polyphyletic with five species, including the type species C. melanura, phylogenetically nested within the genus Oenanthe. This implied that Cercomela and Oenanthe were synonyms. The genus Oenanthe (Vieillot, 1816) has taxonomic priority over Cercomela (Bonaparte, 1856) making Cercomela a junior synonym. The genus name Oenanthe was used by Aristotle for an unidentified bird. The word is derived from the Greek oenoē meaning "vine" and anthos meaning "bloom". The bird was associated with the grape harvest season.
The name "wheatear" is not derived from "wheat" or any sense of "ear", but is a folk etymology of "white" and "arse", referring to the prominent white rump found in the northern wheatear, the first species so named.
Description Most species have characteristic black and white or red and white markings on their rumps or their long tails. Most species are strongly sexually dimorphic; only the male has the striking plumage patterns characteristic of the genus, though the females share the white or red rump patches.
Species list
The genus contains 31 species:
Image Common name Scientific name Distribution Northern wheatear Oenanthe oenanthe Holarctic; winters to Sub-Saharan Africa Atlas wheatear Oenanthe seebohmi Maghreb; winters in western Sahel Capped wheatear Oenanthe pileata southern Sub-Saharan Africa Buff-breasted wheatear Oenanthe bottae Asir Mountains Rusty-breasted wheatear Oenanthe frenata Ethiopian Highlands Isabelline wheatear Oenanthe isabellina central-southern Eurasia; winters to Sub-Saharan, Africa, Middle east and South Asia - Heuglin's wheatear Oenanthe heuglinii northern Sub-Saharan Africa Hooded wheatear Oenanthe monacha Middle-East Desert wheatear Oenanthe deserti Maghreb and central Asia; winters to North Africa, Middle East and South Asia Western black-eared wheatear Oenanthe hispanica western Mediterranean; winters to western Sahel Pied wheatear Oenanthe pleschanka central Asia; winters to East Africa Eastern black-eared wheatear Oenanthe melanoleuca eastern Mediterranean; winters to eastern Sahel Cyprus wheatear Oenanthe cypriaca Cyprus White-fronted black chat Oenanthe albifrons Sudan (region) Somali wheatear Oenanthe phillipsi Horn of Africa Red-rumped wheatear Oenanthe moesta Morocco to Jordan; partly winters to eastern Saudi Arabia Blackstart Oenanthe melanura Sahel and Red Sea region Familiar chat Oenanthe familiaris Sub-Saharan Africa Brown-tailed rock chat Oenanthe scotocerca Chad, western Sudan and Horn of Africa - Sombre rock chat Oenanthe dubia montane desert of central Ethiopia Brown rock chat Oenanthe fusca northern South Asia Variable wheatear Oenanthe picata from eastern Iran and southern Kazakhstan to Indus River ;winters to UAE and northwestern India Finsch's wheatear Oenanthe finschii Anatolia to western Central Asia; winters to Cyprus, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan Mourning wheatear Oenanthe lugens Middle East Kurdish wheatear Oenanthe xanthoprymna Kurdistan; winters to Red Sea and southern Arabian Peninsula Red-tailed wheatear Oenanthe chrysopygia Iran and Pakistan; winters to Arabian peninsula and northwestern South Asia White-crowned wheatear Oenanthe leucopyga North Africa and Middle East Hume's wheatear Oenanthe albonigra Iran, eastern Oman to Indus valley Black wheatear Oenanthe leucura Iberian Peninsula to western Libya and Mauritania Arabian wheatear Oenanthe lugentoides Arabian Peninsula Abyssinian wheatear Oenanthe lugubris montane East Africa
Behaviour Wheatears are terrestrial insectivorous birds of open, often dry, country. They often nest in rock crevices or disused burrows. Northern species are long-distance migrants, wintering in Africa.
Fossil record Oenanthe kormosi (Late Miocene of Polgardi, Hungary) Kessler, E. 2013. Neogene songbirds (Aves, Passeriformes) from Hungary. – Hantkeniana, Budapest, 2013, 8: 37–149. Oenanthe pongraczi (Pliocene of Csarnota, Hungary)
References