A Naturalist Abroad: Wagtails and Wheatears and Redstarts, Oh My!

Yesterday I wrote about the impressive and somewhat legendary White Storks we saw while traveling in Switzerland.  Being most familiar with California birds, the storks were rather exotic to me.  Less conspicuous but no less beautiful were the smaller birds, the songbirds of Switzerland.  At first glance they might not seem very impressive, these little common birds of Europe, but they are still exotic and exciting when seen for the first time.  And certainly these European birds are beautiful no matter how many times one has seen them!

 

A note: I am a very, very long way from knowing my birds of Europe, and open to corrections of the following identifications!

 

White Wagtail

Pictured above is a White Wagtail (Motacilla alba), a bird that I recognized immediately as a member of the same family as our familiar American Pipit (Anthus rubescens).  The big tip-off is this bird's habit of bobbing its tail up and down, a trait strongly associated with pipits and wagtails (hence the name).  White Wagtails are very common across Europe, and it seems that a few take up summer residence (and possibly even breed) in extreme western Alaska.

Female Northern Wheatear

The bird above is a female Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe).  We watched her catching insects, presumably to feed to her young, while hiking the popular trail from Männlichen to Kleine Scheidegg, in Switzerland's Berner Oberland.  Though common in Europe, a few Northern Wheatears breed in the North American arctic, migrating over from both directions (via Alaska as well as Greenland).  They are long distance migrants, wintering in Africa.

Female Common Chaffinch

The Common Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) is a widespread and very common bird in Europe, sometimes sited as Switzerland's most abundant breeding bird.  I imagine this chaffinch is a pretty ho-hum addition to a European birder's list.  But they really are quite pretty little finches, with a pleasant song.  I certainly enjoyed seeing them while in Switzerland!

Juvenile Black Redstart

Another common bird of Switzerland is the Black Redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros).  The Northern Wheatear and Black Redstart were formerly considered members of the thrush family, now reclassified as Old World flycatchers (family Muscicapidae).  The American Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla) of the eastern United States is a warbler in the family Parulidae and unrelated to European Redstarts.  This is an example of how misleading common names can be!

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing species of birds that were completely new to me while in Switzerland, though these are just a few of the most common species found there.  I also had fun identifying them and trying to determine what family they belonged to based on my knowledge of North American birds.  So next time a European birder gets excited over our humble California Scrub Jay, I will be more sympathetic!