Red-rumped Wheatear Oenanthe moesta Scientific name definitions

14·5–16 cm. Breeding male  is pale grey on crown to nape, shading to black on mantle, with white forehead through supercilium to rear ear-coverts, black face (through eye) to throat and neck side (continuing on scapulars), white-edged blackish wings with two narrow white wingbars, pinkish-buff rump  shading to rufous on uppertail-coverts  and basal outer tail , distal half of tail black  (no inverted T-pattern); breast  to belly whitish, vent buffy-rufous; bill and legs black. Non-breeding male is dark grey on scapulars and back. Breeding female has pale rufous head merging into greyer back, very narrow wingbars, with rump and tail as male but more rufous in outer tail (short inverted “T”), dull greyish-white below, with brighter indistinct submoustachial and vague rufous tinges on breast side and lower flanks; non-breeding female has stronger buffy-rufous wing edging. Juvenile is like non-breeding female, but head paler, back spotted buff, underparts lightly scaled brown; first-winter female as adult, but paler on head and face.

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N Africa from Western Sahara E to NE Egypt (Sinai), and from S Syria S to C & E Jordan and S Israel (where rare), with no recent records in W Iraq; non-breeding also C Arabia.

Breeds in bush-clad desert fringes and flat dry saline steppe with low plant cover including Artemisia and Chenopodiaceae, and dotted with rodent burrows. In N Africa low-lying, flat or gently sloping sandy, stony and clay semi-desert plains (reaching shoreline on Atlantic coast) with sparse, low bushes (e.g. Euphorbia, Artemisia, Argania, Atriplex, Nitraria), also in dry lakebeds and saltflats, mostly avoiding fields, rocky areas, dissected terrain and, in Tunisia at least, coastal plains; relatively densely bushed desert may be optimal. Where sympatric with O. deserti, displaced into poorer areas.

Sedentary and partial local migrant. Main periods of movement Aug–Sept and Feb–Apr; in E Morocco most move S in winter, and in Tunisia rarer in winter than in Mar. Some E breeders migrate to C Arabia.

In N Africa beetles, caterpillars up to 5 cm, grasshoppers, ants, and occasionally green plant material. Most items brought by one pair to nestlings were a pale form of the scorpion Scorpio maurus. Forages by perch-and-pounce method from low stem, and bound-and-grab method on ground; on Atlantic coast of Morocco observed to feed in intertidal zone.

Song , apparently by both sexes (male thought to perform more), a series of phrases  each lasting 6–8 seconds and consisting of several “tlik” notes, then 12–13 distinctive whirring trills at successively higher pitch, “tlik, tlik, tlik truuuuii truuuuiii truuuuiii truuuuiii…”. Courtship song a long-drawn, wavering, warbling whistle, rising in pitch and likened to a whistling kettle coming to boil, “whiirwhiirwhiirwhiirwhiir…”, usually given in antiphonal duet as partner reaches top during leap-frogging ceremony. Subsong a curious sequence of creaking sounds, by both sexes, often interspersed with contact-alarm calls. Calls include “tlik”, “chack” or “prrup” in contact-alarm, sometimes run together in rapid irregular series, and melodious “keeyup” in high alarm, these two sometimes used together.

Late Jan to early Jun, mainly Apr and early May, in Morocco; late Feb to mid-Jun in Algeria; Mar–Apr in Sinai; Feb–Mar (first brood) in Israel; often double-brooded. In N Africa some pairs maintain joint territory all year. Nest a cup of leaves, rootlets and stems, lined with wool, hair, feathers and/or snakeskin, placed up to 2 m deep in rodent (Psammomys, Meriones) hole in ground or earth bank, sometimes under stones or in hole in wall. Eggs 4–5 (2–4 in Algeria), whitish to whitish-blue with sparse reddish-brown spotting; incubation period 14–15 days; nestling period c. 15 days; post-fledging dependence c. 3 weeks.

Not globally threatened. In N Africa patchily distributed but locally common; in Morocco distributed in three separate areas, in each of which common. Rather scarce in Tunisia. Fairly common along N coast of Egypt (one record of 12 males singing within “half a mile”, i.e. c. 800 m), but Sinai population either extremely small or extinct. Extremely rare breeding resident in Israel; local in Jordan.