Figure 262. Note the rufous-tinged auricular and buffy supraloral evident in this 14 October 1988 photograph of a Northern Wheatear near Kirkwood, Tehama County (1988-197; Jon L. Dunn).

 

Figure 376. Eleven Northern Wheatears have been detected in California, most of them along the coast from San Francisco County northward. Only one has been found in an inland county, this first-fall individual present from 13 to 15 October 1988 near Kirkwood in Tehama County, where it was sketched on the second day. The extent of black depicted on the tail is somewhat greater than is present on the Northern Wheatear, but photographs of this bird (e.g., Figure 262) and observers’ descriptions ruled out the similar Isabelline Wheatear (O. isabellina), a species unrecorded in the New World (1988-197; Tim Manolis).

 

 

 

 

 

 

NORTHERN WHEATEAR Oenanthe oenanthe (Linnaeus, 1758)

Accepted: 11 (69%)	Treated in Appendix H: no
Not accepted: 5	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 0	Color image: see Figures

The western component of this Old World species, O. o. leucorhoa, nests in Iceland and Greenland and from northeastern arctic Canada south to northern Quebec and Labrador. The seebohmi group is resident in northern Africa. Widespread O. o. oenanthe breeds across most of Eurasia and eastward from Siberia across most of Alaska to northern Yukon and the western Northwest Territories. On the basis of range oenanthe is, by far, the most likely subspecies to reach California. The species winters in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Iraq (Cramp 1988). Migrants appear regularly in western Alaska and on islands of the northern Bering Sea, rarely to uncommonly on the Pribilof Islands, and casually on islands of the Aleutian chain. Fall vagrants have twice been found in southwestern British Columbia: 10–16 October 1970 and 7–20 October 2006 (NAB 60:126); and twice in western Oregon: 1 October 1988 and 28 October 1995. A male in alternate plumage was photographed on 22 June 1977 at Malheur NWR in southeastern Oregon. Additional vagrant records are scattered across North America, including many from the Atlantic Provinces and the Northeast; winter records exist for Ohio and Louisiana (Kren and Zoerb 1997). Southerly and easterly New World records come from southern Mexico (Yucatán and Quintana Roo), the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba, Barbados, the Netherlands Antilles, and Puerto Rico.

California’s first Northern Wheatear was a year-old male collected on 11 June 1971 at Southeast Farallon Island (Manuwal and Lewis 1972). The remaining California records involve fall vagrants between 15 September and 10 November, including one record of a definite adult: a male at Southeast Farallon Island on 26 September 1992. The 1988 Tehama County record (Figures 262, 376) is the only one not from a coastal county; most of the state’s records are from near the coast itself. All wheatears recorded in North America have been identified as Northerns, yet other members of the genus occur as vagrants in the Old World and could conceivably reach North America. Although no other species of wheatear is considered likely to reach California, surprises do occur (see, for example, the Greater Sand-Plover account). Thus reports of the Northern Wheatear should eliminate congeners, particularly the similar Isabelline Wheatear (O. isabellina). Clement (1987) provided a thorough summary of wheatear identification.