Northern Wheatear @ Montauk

We went to see the Northern Wheatear at Third House Montauk (Theodore Roosevelt County Park) this morning and found it almost immediately on arrival at c. 9 am. The favored habitat of this Eurasian bird is bare stony open country and that is exactly what it found all around Third House. The bird was active east and north of the buildings, hopping from fence post to fence post, from boulder to cow patty, diving down for insects and popping back up again, occasionally running along the ground and generally acting like a Wheatear should. Northern Europe has a lot of open land like this and Northern Wheatears are very common there both as breeders and in migration. From northern Europe, they have colonized Greenland and northeastern Canada but almost all of these birds follow the migration track of their ancestors going down the eastern side of the Atlantic to winter in Africa. This adds up to one of the greatest migrations of any land bird! Surprisingly few of the Greenland or Canadian birds end up in migration on this side of the Atlantic making this bird a rarity in these parts. I should add that our Montauk bird (like almost all the Wheatears that we see) was in its winter plumage without the black mask. However it has the rich coloration of the Greenland/Canada race and it retains the signature white rump and white upper tail of all the wheatears (the name means 'white arse'). The Wheatear belongs to a group of Old World birds known as chats (including the Nightingale, the original Robin, the original Redstart, and lots of others) which have always been considered thrushes but have just recently been reclassified as Old World Flycatchers! Our Wheatear wasn't catching flies in the air (at least not that I could see) but he -- if it was a he -- was certainly hunting insects on the run as well as perch-hunting.

Afterwards we went to the Point where there were great flocks of terns and gulls working the choppy waters. Among the flocks on the north side was a dark bird with a white wing flash. This bird, not much larger than the Laughing Gulls which abounded in the vicinity, was no doubt a Jaeger but which one? The odds favor the Parasitic Jaeger which travels with the migrating terns and loves to rob them of their catch.

Eric Salzman