Stonechat birds (there is one in the image above next to the gull, if you look closely!) are smaller than robins, but pretty similar in appearance. They live in heaths, bogs and conifer plantations.
Learn more on how to help our garden birds.
These birds like blackberries and gorse bushes, and also eat dragonflies and grasshoppers.
They are so-called due to the call, which sounds like two stones being knocked together!
Male stonechats have orange breasts (rather than red breasts like robins) and black throats with a white ‘collar’, black heads and brown backs. Young stonechats and females are paler in colour.
If the stonechat has a pale eye-stripe (or pale tail marks), then it’s likely a whinchat.
Wildlife Trust writes that stonechats are often followed around by Dartford warblers (in southern England), who catch the small insects that the stonechats disturb!
