The Alaskan population crosses the whole of Asia to reach Africa: as much as 15,000 km each way.
From Northern Wheatear
Its Spanish name comes from the white of its tail: 'colla' plus 'alba'.
From Northern Wheatear
The populations that breed in Alaska and Greenland cross half the planet to winter in sub-Saharan Africa, like the rest of the species.
From Northern Wheatear
It nests underground in the abandoned burrows of gerbils and ground squirrels, sometimes more than a metre deep, and depends on those rodents in order to breed on the bare steppe.
From Isabelline Wheatear
Its name refers to the colour isabelline, a pale beige which, according to an apocryphal legend, comes from a vow by Isabella of Castile not to change her shift until Granada was taken.
From Isabelline Wheatear
It is among the hardest wheatears to identify precisely because of its lack of features: uniformly sandy, without contrast, and telling it from other species demands attention to proportions and posture.
From Isabelline Wheatear
It breeds only on Cyprus, an island of less than 10,000 square kilometres, and the entire world population winters in a narrow strip of north-east Africa: two tiny areas connected by a journey of thousands of kilometres.
From Cyprus Wheatear
It was split from the pied wheatear as a species of its own in the 1990s, on the basis of differences in song, plumage and genetics.
From Cyprus Wheatear

Ecosystems