Isle of Wight wheatears

I was in the Isle of Wight for a few days staying at Rose’s parents’ flat. I went on my own and she joined me later. On one of the days I went for a walk along the clifftops to the Ventnor Botanic Gardens, along a path that dipped and rose between coves and vegetation.

Jackdaws proliferated and I could hear greenfinches and great tits, then at one portion of beach, Castle Cove, which a castle shaped house used to overlook before it was demolished for residential development, there were a number of mystery birds flying about. I looked at them through broken binoculars and struggled to focus. They seemed like wagtails, but their colouring wasn’t quite right. The feathers were greyish brown and the breast was orangey. They sported stylish black eye stripes.

The little birds bounced about discretely, they sung no songs, looking around on the grass and on the sandy beach, perhaps for insects. A teenager was riding a motorbike up and down a grassy bank in his garden. He rode it cautiously down and then as fast as he could the way back up. I followed the birds to the low sandstone cliffs where they seemed to be living.

When I got home I looked them up in a bird book and found them to be wheatears, I think. Their Latin name is Oenanthe oenanthe.