common stonechat

The males have a black head, a white half-collar, a black back, a white rump, and a black tail the wings are black with a large white patch on the top side of the inner wing. The upper breast is usually dark orange-red, with a sharp or gradual transition to white or pale orange on the lower breast and belly depending on subspecies. In a few, black replaces the orange breast feathers in part or entirely. Females have brown rather than black above and on the head with an indistinct paler eyebrow line, chestnut-buff rather than orange below, and less white on the wings. Both sexes' plumage is somewhat duller and streakier outside the breeding season.

Summers in open country with bushes,including high-altitude semi-desert; winters in scrub, and cultivation.

Common Stonechat feeds mainly on invertebrates such as insects and larvae of numerous species, beetles, flies, ants, grasshoppers, bugs, damselflies and spiders. It may also take snails, small earthworms and small fish and lizards. It also consumes small vertebrates, seeds and fruits.

Calls include hweet and hard tsak.

Common stonechat is the name used for the Saxicola species Saxicola torquatus when this is treated in its broad sense. It is however now more widely considered to be a superspecies consisting of several related but distinct species which are outwardly fairly similar but genetically distinct and replacing each other geographically without significant hybridisation. The Common Stonechat resembles its closest living relative the European Stonechat but is typically darker above and paler below with a white rump and whiter underparts with less orange on the breast.