{"id":4277,"date":"2026-04-09T10:24:53","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T09:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/?p=4277"},"modified":"2026-04-14T17:07:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T16:07:18","slug":"wheatear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/wheatear\/","title":{"rendered":"Wheatear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The\u00a0<strong>wheatears<\/strong>\u00a0are passerine birds of the genus <strong><em>Oenanthe<\/em><\/strong>. They were formerly considered to be members of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thrush_(bird)\">thrush<\/a>\u00a0family, Turdidae, but are now more commonly placed in the\u00a0flycatcher\u00a0family,\u00a0Muscicapidae.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0name\u00a0&#8220;wheatear&#8221; is not derived from &#8220;wheat&#8221; or any sense of &#8220;ear&#8221;, but is a\u00a0folk etymology\u00a0of &#8220;white&#8221; and &#8220;arse&#8221;, referring to the prominent white rump found in most species. The genus name\u00a0<em>Oenanthe<\/em>\u00a0is derived from the Greek\u00a0<em>oenos<\/em>\u00a0(\u03bf\u03af\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2) &#8220;wine&#8221; and\u00a0<em>anthos<\/em>\u00a0(\u03b1\u03bd\u03b8\u03cc\u03c2) &#8220;flower&#8221;. It refers to the northern wheatear&#8217;s return to Greece in the spring just as the\u00a0grapevines\u00a0blossom.<\/p>\n<p>Most species have characteristic black and white or red and white markings on their rumps or their long tails. Most species are strongly\u00a0sexually dimorphic; only the male has the striking plumage patterns characteristic of the genus, though the females share the white or red rump patches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The\u00a0wheatears\u00a0are passerine birds of the genus Oenanthe. They were formerly considered to be members of the\u00a0thrush\u00a0family, Turdidae, but are now more commonly placed in the\u00a0flycatcher\u00a0family,\u00a0Muscicapidae. The\u00a0name\u00a0&#8220;wheatear&#8221; is not derived from &#8220;wheat&#8221; or any sense of &#8220;ear&#8221;, but is a\u00a0folk etymology\u00a0of &#8220;white&#8221; and &#8220;arse&#8221;, referring to the prominent white rump found in most species. The genus [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":3256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[143,48,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-143","category-bird-species","category-migrant-arrivals"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4277"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4277"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7256,"href":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4277\/revisions\/7256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.butemuseum.org.uk\/butebirdgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}