The following day opinion had shifted towards its being a probable Stejneger's Stonechat Saxicola stejnegeri and a faecal sample was taken ...
When I saw the bird the following day it was perching conveniently on brambles and dead seed-heads at the top of the beach ...
... it was quite active and flew between perches but remained still for preiods of time to give some nice views ...
... the general colour tone seemed to be mid-way between typical Atlantic Stonechat Saxicola rubicola hibernans and Siberian Stonechat and did not have that very pale frosty look of Siberian as it perched facing us ...
... what we wanted was some views of the bird facing away so as to show the tail and rump ...
... and then it flew a little closer and perched perfectly ...
... the rump was clearly visible now and was a deep rufous tone with some darker markings within ...
... the supercilium was rather dull and indistinct ...
... all of these features point to Stejneger's Stonechat ... a species that breeds further east than Siberian Stonechat ... its range extending right to the east coast of northern Asia ...
... this was a remarkably easy bird to study and so different from my experience of the Salthouse bird last autumn which showed for under a minute over a four hour period ...
... typically for Asian Stonechats, I never heard it call ...
It seems that Leonhard Stejneger after whom the species was named was a renowned 19th century Norwegian taxonomist who named a wide range of taxa including birds, reptiles and worms ... his name is commemorated in an equally large number of species.
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