Atlas Wheatear
Oenanthe seebohmi
Small thrush-like bird with distinctive black-and-white tail pattern that is striking in flight. Breeding male has a black face, throat and wing, gray back and crown, and white underparts. Breeding female is duller, with a brownish crown and back, and usually a speckled blackish face and throat. Nonbreeding and immature birds are duller overall, though males retain their distinctive black throat. Breeds in the Atlas Mountains of northwest Africa, in areas of bare rock and short grass. Migrates south into the Sahel, where it spends the non-breeding season in a variety of open habitats such as grasslands and barren rocky plains. Tends to stay on the ground or on low perches. Jumbled-sounding song is quite variable, often including whistles, trills, and mimicry. Similar in appearance to Northern Wheatear, though male Atlas Wheatear is usually separated by its black throat. Separating females during migration and on the wintering grounds is usually difficult. Female Atlas Wheatear has a black “wingpit” and front part of the underwing, but this is hard to see in the field.
Identification
Adult male Atlas wheatears in breeding are very distinctive when compared to northern wheatear, having a black throat, face, lores and ear coverts, sometimes extending to the uppermost part of the breast, occasionally with some buff mixed in. Upperparts are similar to adult male Northern wheatear but sometimes has more white on the forehead and less extensive area of black on the tip of the tail where the white colour may extend along the outer tail. The axillaries and underwing coverts are black and the underparts are often whiter than in northern wheatear. After the post-breeding moult the upperparts are pale brown with the wing coverts, primaries, secondaries and tertials finely tipped with buff while the greater coverts show whitish tips. The fresh black throat is spotted with paler tips to the feathers and the breast has a buffish tinge. The females are variable from closely resembling the females of the nominate subspecies or showing brown ear coverts and having black or blackish-brown colour over the chin and lores tipped with buff, grey or sandy colour. The upperparts are greyer, often similar to the adult male, although may show a more buffy shade.
Taxonomy
Seebohm's wheatear was formerly regarded as the North African subspecies of the widespread Northern wheatear of Eurasia, Greenland and northern North America, however, it is now regarded as a full species. Atlas wheatear has been proposed as the English common name for this species by the International Ornithological Committee.
- Scientific name
- Oenanthe seebohmi
- Authority
- (Dixon, 1882)
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Muscicapidae
- Genus
- Oenanthe
Range and habitat
The Atlas wheatear breeds in mountains on stony plataeux and sparsely vegetated slopes with scattered boulders between 1,700 and 2,300m, although may breed as low as 150m in Algeria. It nests in holes in the ground or between boulders. It winters in open areas of semi-arid savanna although it favours the more humid Guinea savanna with scattered trees such as acacia, Balanites and Salvadora over more arid regions nearer the edge of the desert. The Atlas wheatear has a disjunct breeding range in north western Africa in north-eastern Morocco where it breeds in the Rif, the Middle Atlas, the High Atlas and central Anti Atlas mountains with another population in north-eastern Algeria in the Aurès Mountains and in the Djurdjura Range. It winters in the western Sahel, mainly in south-western Mauritania, northern Senegal and western Mali with smaller numbers in central Mali and some seen at times in winter in southern Morocco. The bulk of the population winters between 15–18°N and 09–16°W. It is estimated that 50,000 Seebohm's wheatears winter in west Africa where they overlap with Northern wheatears.
- Breeding range
- AF : nw Africa
- Non-breeding range
- w Africa
- Migration
- Complete migrants
Conservation
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
Other Birds
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