Isabelline Wheatear

A large pale wheatear. Gray-brown above with warm orangish tones on white underparts and a pale white eyebrow. Tail is predominantly black with white edges and it contrasts sharply with its snow-white rump. Somewhat similar in coloration to a toned-down female Northern Wheatear, but visibly larger, shorter-tailed, and longer-billed (all of which are accentuated by the typically tall, erect posture). Inhabits flat, open areas, often at middle to high elevations. Remarkable song has a tumbling quality that includes long ringing whistles, chattering, and imitations of other sounds in the surrounding environment. Calls include shorter whistles and hard “chak’s,” like rocks being struck together.

Its habitat is steppe and open countryside and it breeds in southern Russia and Central Asia to northern Pakistan, wintering in Africa and northwestern India. It is a very rare vagrant to western Europe.

Its diet includes ants, grasshoppers, moths, flies, mites, spiders and insect larvae, and it sometimes eats seeds as well.