Status: 10/27/2022 1:12 p.m
Because of its white eye stripe, it is also called the “meadow clown”: the whinchat. It has now been voted “Bird of the Year”. The sparrow-sized animal is considered critically endangered.
The whinchat is bird of the year 2023. The rare meadow breeder prevailed in the public vote with around 43 percent of the votes against tree sparrows, red-backed shrikes, pied flycatchers and moorhens, as reported by the German Nature Conservation Union (NABU). In 1987 the little songbird already had this title.
Measuring 12 to 14 inches tall, the whinchat gets its name from its brown-orange chest and throat. The white eye stripe also earned him the nickname “meadow clown”. Otherwise, the bird, which is barely the size of a sparrow, has rather subtle feathers: its upper side is the color of dark wood, its lower body is whitish. The throat appears orange. The Whinchat begins or ends its song “often with smacking sounds”.
Whinchats in danger of extinction
The bird species likes damp meadows, fallow land and field edges – especially if there are individual bushes, tall shrubs or fence posts on them. There it settles to sing or hunt insects. According to NABU, however, such conditions are becoming increasingly rare due to intensive farming. In addition, over-fertilization and the use of poisons threatened the habitat and food of the little throat.
That is why the Whinchat (Saxicola rubetra) is on the Red List of Threatened Species. In Germany there are still 19,500 to 35,000 breeding pairs, most commonly in the east and north-east.
The little songbird spends the winter more than 5,000 kilometers from Germany south of the Sahara. In April he will be back.
The “Bird of the Year” was first chosen in Germany in 1971. Since 2021, he has been determined by public election. Almost 135,000 people took part in the vote this year.