Northern Wheatear Oenanthe oenanthe

The Northern Wheatear is among the most studied passerines of the Old World (1 Panov, E. N. (2005). Wheatears of Palearctic: Ecology, Behaviour and Evolution of the Genus Oenanthe. Pensoft, Sofia and Moscow. Close ). Its basic life history is well documented (2 Cramp, S., Editor (1988). The Birds of the Western Palearctic, Volume 5: Tyrant Flycatchers to Thrushes. Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. Close , 3 Glutz Von Blotzheim, U. N. and K. M. Bauer. (1988). Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas. Band 11/1. Passeriformes (2. Teil). Wiesbaden: AULA-Verlag. Close , 4 Conder, P. J. (1989). The Wheatear. Christopher Helm, London, United Kingdom. Close ), though among its four subspecies, nearly all work has focused on oenanthe and leucorhoa, with relatively little research conducted on libanotica and seebohmi. The Northern Wheatear has a nearly circumpolar breeding range in the Northern Hemisphere, extending from eastern Canada, Iceland, and Greenland across Eurasia, south to North Africa and the Middle East, and east from Siberia to Alaska and the Yukon Territory, with a gap in central Canada. The species breeds in habitats ranging from flat tundra to mountains and desert, wherever there is open, broken terrain with relatively short vegetative cover and scattered rocks or boulders (1 Panov, E. N. (2005). Wheatears of Palearctic: Ecology, Behaviour and Evolution of the Genus Oenanthe. Pensoft, Sofia and Moscow. Close ); within such habitats, it often coexists with humans.

The Northern Wheatear is one of very few breeding passerines in North America that migrates to the Old World; nearly the entire global population overwinters in sub-Saharan Africa. Breeders from Alaska and the Yukon (oenanthe) reach Africa by migrating westward across the whole of Asia and the Middle East, whereas leucorhoa from eastern Canada make epic trans-Atlantic flights eastward.

The remarkable seasonal journeys of this species have contributed to it becoming a model for the study of migration (5 Bairlein, F., V. Dierschke, J. Delingat, C. Eikenaar, I. Maggini, M. Bulte, and H. Schmaljohann (2013). Revealing the control of migratory fueling: an integrated approach combining laboratory and field studies in northern wheatears Oenanthe oenanthe. Current Zoology 59:381–392. Close , 6 Bairlein, F., C. Eikenaar, and H. Schmaljohann (2015). Routes to genes: unravelling the control of avian migration—an integrated approach using Northern Wheatear Oenanthe oenanthe as model organism. Journal of Ornithology 156:S3–S14. Close , 7 Eikenaar, C., A. Hegemann, F. Packmor, I. Kleudgen, I., and C. Isaksson (2019). Not just fuel: energy stores are correlated with immune function and oxidative damage in a long-distance migrant. Current Zoology 29:1–8. Close ). Subspecies oenanthe and leucorhoa differ in features related to migration, particularly size and physiology, and are good subjects for research because both are abundant as migrants in western Europe, can be captured with relative ease and are readily maintained in captivity.

The Northern Wheatear is ranked as Least Concern (not globally threatened) because it is abundant and widely distributed (8 BirdLife International (2018). Oenanthe oenanthe. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2018: e.T103773898A132192232. Close ). However, populations have declined markedly in western Europe, largely as a result of changes in land use and agricultural practices.