Siberian Stonechat

The Siberian, or Asian, stonechat is a recently validated species of the Old World flycatcher family. It resembles the European stonechat but is typically darker above and paler below, with a white rump and whiter underparts with less orange on the breast. The male in breeding plumage has black upperparts and head, a conspicuous white collar, scapular patch and rump and a restricted area of orange on the throat, closely resembling the whinchat; the female has pale brown upperparts and head, white neck patches and a pale, unstreaked pinkish-yellow rump (Wikipedia, general species account).

It breeds in open rough scrubland or grassland with scattered shrubs from sea level to about 4,000 m or more, and is migratory, wintering from southern Japan to Thailand and India and west to north-east Africa. The subspecies indicus of the Himalaya and others in the south of the range show larger white areas in the plumage. In the Himalayan foothills of Bhutan, migrants may be seen foraging in fields and pastures above 2,000 m, though most move further down and south to winter in the tropics. SoIB 2023 rates it a Low conservation priority, a winter migrant and localised summer migrant of open habitat with a Very Large range of about 1.37 million km² (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).