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Northern Wheatear : Northern Wheatear Mecaqcukaq Every year some friends and I hike to the top of a small mountain near Fairbanks named Wickersham Dome in search of migrating Northern wheatears, small thrush-like birds that have recently been placed in the Old World flycatcher family. Two years ago we found 26 of them on one of the rocky ridges, bobbing and bouncing in the air and landing only feet away to see who we were. Most of them were probably young birds and were following their elders on a migration that would finally take them through eastern Asia all the way to sub-Saharan Africa, more than 9000 miles away. In the spring they would follow a similar route back to Alaska for a total of 18640 miles! To do this they travel about 180 miles per day. They are the world champion songbird migrants, traveling farther than any other songbird in one year. But wheatears are champions in another way. They have the largest range of any other songbird in the world, nesting in alpine parts of Eurasia, in Greenland and the northeastern Arctic islands of Canada as well as throughout Alaska, including the uplands of the Lower Yukon Delta. When I first saw them in the Askinuk Mountains in the early 1980’s, I never in my wildest dreams imagined that they were such an amazing bird. Neither did anyone else, for that matter. No one knew precisely where they wintered until only two years ago after installing miniature tracking devices on them. These trackers finally established that the birds ended up in the northern parts of sub-Saharan Africa – incredible new knowledge for those who are passionate about birds. I should have suspected they were special birds when I learned their scientific name, Oenanthe oenanthe, means “vine blossom,” and was given to the bird by the Greek philosopher Aristotle more than 2000 years ago because the birds arrived on their breeding grounds in Greece just at the time the grape vines began to flower in Spring. It is a very poetic name, don’t you agree? The English common name is anything but poetic. “Wheatear” has nothing to do with wheat or ear. It is really just a euphemism for the Anglo Saxon, “white arse,” referring to its white rump, which is actually a very important part of his equipment, as you shall see in a bit. The Yup’ik name I have for the Northern wheatear, Mecaqcukaq, is a puzzle. It literally means, “ready to splash or splat,” and may relate to its courtship flight high in the air with a dizzying glide back to earth (as it sings) that makes it look like it’s going to slam headlong into the ground – a lot like the mating flight of the Lapland longspur, which has a similar Yup’ik name in the Nunivak Island area: Mecaqtaq (although one source says this is only the name for the female longspur). Another explanation for the name may be the way it hunts for its food, mainly insects and berries. It both runs and flutters in hot pursuit of active insects, or watches from a rocky perch, then plunges down to take the food on the ground. But let’s get back to some Spring basics, like when they first arrive in the uplands of the Lower Yukon Delta in May, or even earlier, depending on the snow conditions in the mountains. The courtship flight of the male is, like I said, up, up and up into the air to a dizzying height, then a slow glide back to the ground with his tail spread while sweetly warbling to his heart’s content, trying his hardest to impress his lady love who is watching far below. After landing on a high perch on the ground, he continues singing songs that often include imitations of other birds, then jumps down and hops and bows around her with his tail fanned to show off that lovely, you guessed it, white arse. As she crouches on the ground, he also may spring back and forth animatedly and then prostrate himself in front of her for several seconds with his wings and tail fully spread like a Japanese fan. This show is to prove he is the right guy for her, and when she is convinced of that she settles into building a nest in a nearby rock crevice or a deserted rodent hole. She builds it in the shape of a cup composed of grasses, twigs and small roots, and lines it with finer materials like moss and feathers. She will lay up to eight pale blue eggs (for the most part unmarked, but sometimes flecked with reddish brown dots at the larger end), then usually she alone will incubate them for two weeks until they hatch. Both parents will feed the nestlings (insects and berries are their main menu) for two additional weeks until fledging time when the parents divide the brood and continue to feed their respective groups for another two weeks. Then it’s up to the fledglings themselves to fatten up and prepare for the longest journey ever made by a songbird anywhere on earth. » List of Yupik Birds

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