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Kurdish Wheatear | Oenanthe xanthoprymna
Koerdische tapuit | Collalba colirroja
Kurdish Wheatear is a small, subtly coloured wheatear with a rusty rump and tail base, breeding in the mountains of south-eastern Anatolia, northern Iraq and western Iran. In winter it moves to Arabia and north-eastern Africa and passes scarcely through the Levant; it closely resembles Red-tailed Wheatear, with which it was long treated as one species.
Voice
The call is a hard chak-chak, often introduced by a thin hweet; in winter this is usually the only sound. The song is a short, fast, scratchy phrase with a few clear whistles and some mimicry, from a boulder or in a short song flight.
Recording: Kasper Wieck — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
14–15 cm. Small and short-tailed. Upperparts plain grey-brown, the crown greyer, with a narrow white supercilium. The breeding male has a black chin, throat and mask contrasting sharply with a white breast and belly; flanks and undertail-coverts are orange-rufous. Rump and tail base rusty, with black central feathers and a broad black terminal band: an inverted T on a rusty background. Wings dark brown, without white. Females and winter birds have a dark brown cheek patch with a white throat below instead of the black mask, and are buffer below.
Confusion species
Red-tailed Wheatear (Oenanthe chrysopygia) has the same rusty rump and tail, but never black in the throat and plain grey-buff underparts without a sharp border to the orange flanks; females and winter birds often cannot be safely separated. Red-rumped Wheatear (Oenanthe moesta) also has a rusty rump, but an almost all-black tail and, in the male, a greyish-white head. Common Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) and Black Redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros) are slimmer and have an all-rufous tail with only dark central feathers, which they constantly quiver. Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe) and Isabelline Wheatear (Oenanthe isabellina) have a white rump.
Habitat
Breeds on dry, stony and rocky mountain slopes with scattered shrubs, between about 1,000 and 2,500 m. In winter on rocky hills, in gorges, wadis and on stony plains with some shrubs, often at the foot of cliffs.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
Breeds in the uplands of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, locally into the extreme north-east of Syria. A scarce passage migrant in Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan and Israel, mainly in October – November and February – March, with a few birds every winter in the Arava, the Negev and around the Dead Sea. Further winters scarcely in western and southern Saudi Arabia, in Yemen and along the Red Sea coast of Egypt. Beyond the region it breeds in south-eastern Turkey and western Iran and also winters in Sudan and Eritrea.
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Israel the best chance is in the winter months in the mountains around Eilat and in the rocky wadis of the Arava. On the breeding grounds in Iraqi Kurdistan it sings from boulders on stony slopes in April and May. Photograph the throat and belly: only a black-throated male can be identified with certainty.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. In the region a limited breeding range in northern Iraq, where little is known about numbers; scarce everywhere in the wintering areas. The overlap with Red-tailed Wheatear makes its winter distribution uncertain.
Scientific name
Oenanthe xanthoprymna | (Hemprich & Ehrenberg, 1833)
Hemprich & Ehrenberg described the species in 1833 as Saxicola xanthoprymna; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Oenanthe was introduced in 1816 by Vieillot. Oenanthe was used by Aristotle for a bird that can no longer be identified; the word comes from the Greek oinos, oinoē 'wine, vine' and anthos 'flower, bloom'. xanthoprymna is Greek, from xanthos 'yellow, rufous' and prymna 'stern, hind part', after the rusty-red rump. The specimen the first description was based on came from Nubia.