Next Term’s Birds, 3: Redstart

Male Redstart 

In my opinion the Redstart must be one of the most brightly-coloured 'common' small birds in Britain - only the Kingfisher surpasses it in the plumage stakes.  The ‘start’ in the bird’s name derives from the Old English word ‘steort’ as in tail.  Red is used rather than orange, as orange is a  relatively recent import into the English language.  I was always taught that Redstarts belong to the Chat family, a sort of sub-group of the Thrush tribe - which also includes Robin, Wheatear, Whinchat, Stonechat, Nightingale and Bluethroat.  However, DNA analysis has shown that Chats are actually more closely allied to Flycatchers (thanks to Elizabeth Watts for the update).

According to the reference books when I was growing up Redstarts were birds of the West and North, so I never expected to see breeding Redstarts in East Yorkshire unless they were on passage along Spurn Point or at other coastal sites.  However, the bird books were incorrect.  The head honcho of East Yorkshire birding was aware of at least one nesting individual in the Weedley Spring area in the 1960s, and there was a noticeboard in Millington Wood in the late 1970s, which explained that they were in that area.  On visits to the Deserted Medieval Village of Wharram Percy and the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserve nearby during the breeding season in the 1980s males were seen, so there was a presence in both those parts of the wolds.  They could occasionally nest away from the wolds.  At Bishop Burton College, whilst on the Ornithology course we were told that one of the Robin nest boxes in the woodland had been inhabited by a Redstart the previous year. More recently, the classes discovered a pair using the same nest hole in a gnarled old Ash tree for many consecutive years.  The classes also enjoyed two males either side of the pond at Millington for several years, but these seemed to disappear just before Covid hit.  in 2023 at least 5 different individual males were singing in a relatively compact area of the Fotherdale Valley near Thixendale adjacent to the Wolds Way.  Last year, the Thursday morning group happened to be walking along the national trail just when half-a-dozen males and females appeared to be sorting out their territories, as several birds came together in the long grass just beyond the wire fence, which borders the path.  By the afternoon only one male could be located, so presumably the border dispute had been settled.  Redstart numbers have fluctuated since the population censuses of the late 1960s, although numbers now - at approximately 135,000 are thought to be similar to those when the first estimate was calculated at the end of the 60s.  My birding groups are going to a couple of locations in the next few weeks, where we hope to connect with this colourful, if unobtrusive songster.