Volume 24, Plate V / Ornithology (Birds)

Wheat-Ear

Saxicola œnanthe

The Wheat-Ear is an early summer visitant extending from Land’s End to Cape Wrath, the adult delicately bluish grey on head and back with white forehead and eye stripe, black wings, lores, and tail markings, white rump conspicuous in flight, and pale chestnut underparts. It flits from stone to stone in downs, warrens, and pastures, feeds on insects and small coastal mollusca, and breeds in holes laying pale verditer green eggs.