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Updated: June 22, 2025
We will take the case of the Whinchat. It arrives from the south-west, and, flying from bush to bush, works its way in a north-easterly direction. In doing so it intrudes upon the territory of a Stonechat; and the Stonechat, becoming excited, flies towards it, and it retires for a short distance in the direction from whence it came.
Professor Ansted includes the Stonechat in his list, but marks it as confined to Guernsey and Sark. There is a specimen in the Museum. WHINCHAT. Pratincola rubetra, Linnaeus. French, "Tarier ordinaire," "Traquet tarier." The Whinchat seems to me never so numerous as the Stonechat, and more local in its distribution during the time it is in the Islands.
In this way the males of all the Warblers that breed commonly in Great Britain establish themselves, each one in its respective station at the respective breeding ground; so, too, do those of many other migrants for example, the Whinchat, Wheatear, Tree-Pipit, and Red-backed Shrike.
A Whinchat that occupied some marshy ground was constantly at war with a pair of Reed-Buntings; their territories were adjacent and in some measure overlapped, and the Whinchat drove away either sex indiscriminately, and was not only always the aggressor but seemed to be master of the situation.
The males of many other migrants can frequently be observed to fight when there was every reason to believe that females had still to arrive. The Blackcap is notoriously pugnacious, but not more so than the Marsh-Warbler or the Whinchat.
Their voices were well suited to their small brilliant forms; not loud, though high-pitched and singularly musical and penetrative, like the high clear notes of a skylark at a distance. They also reminded me of certain notes, which have a human quality, in some of our songsters the swallow, redstart, pied wagtail, whinchat, and two or three others.
For example, the Grasshopper-Warbler, Marsh-Warbler, Nightingale, Corncrake, Red-backed Shrike, or Whinchat have each some distinctive peculiarity which makes them conspicuous, and each one is subject to marked fluctuation in numbers.
Yet a Whinchat, when it has established itself, is most pugnacious; it not only attacks every bird of a similar size that approaches its position, but its behaviour under such circumstances bears the impress of unusual determination; and if we were to take a male and place it in the position of the Stonechat, we should find that its nature would change, that the presence of the Stonechat would evoke a hostile response, and, conversely, that the instinct of the Stonechat would not be susceptible to stimulation.
Although the Sedge-Bird imitated all I have mentioned, it made much more frequent use of the notes of some than of others the Sparrow, the Whinchat, the Swallow, and the Starling appeared to be its chief favourites, whilst it only touched once or twice on the notes of the Greenfinch and the Linnet.
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