Hello Roy
My only experience of Isabelline Wheatear was of repeated views of a single
bird outside Ramthambhor Nat. Pk. in India. We drove into the park on three
consecuive days and on at least two occasions the bird was present on what
appeared to be a well worn football pitch just on the outskirts of the park.
The bird constantly appeared to stand guard over an area of field occasionally
relieving us of that blight to all Australian birders, the flies. It was not
perturbed by our presence, in fact we eventually decided the entire pitch was
it's territory.
Excellent illustrations of Wheatear's are shown in "The Most Complete Field
Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe" Mullarney, Svensson etc Birds on
page 265 can clearly be seen with a white upper tail and lower rump. Good
information and a reasonable photo of Isabelline Wheatear is available in "A
Photographic Guide to the Birds of India" including Nepal etc by Bikram Grewal,
Bill Harvey and Otto Pfister.
It sounds as though the bird was deliberately keeping to the heavier vegetation
which tends to shy away from Wheatear and I have to say is not a habitat I have
seen Wheatears in. My limited experience with Isabelline and Desert Wheatear
and my more "not another Wheatear" experience with Northern Wheatear have
allways shown the birds to be on exposed short vegatation, sand, moorland,
coastal grassland.
The exception here is Variable Wheatear which can be found on low bushes or
walls. I actually found them on overhead wires, didn't that confuse us for a
time!
Is non-breeding male White-winged Triller an option?
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