The Redstart

by john mcewen illustrated by carry akroyd

Among the brightest of the spring migrants is the redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus). The male is more glorious, with a vivid head and orange breast in addition to the orange (red) tail and rump – also the startling feature of the paler female, which gives the bird its name. ‘Start’ is from Anglo-Saxon ‘steort’ (tail). Phoenicurus is from the Greek phonikouros (firetail) bestowed by Aristotle, father of natural science, from phoenix, firebird of Egyptian mythology.

Among the bird’s English folk names are firetail and brantail. It belongs to the thrush (Turdidae) family, which includes the robin, whose ‘red’ breast and sky-blue eggs are a match, and the chats (stonechat etc). They all delight in fanning, quivering – and, in the redstart’s case, thereby setting alight with colour –their tails.

John Buxton’s (1912-89) book The Redstart (1950) is a bird classic. In 1943, Buxton was a prisoner of war at Eichstätt in Bavaria. He was an ornithologist, inspired by his brother-in-law Ronald Lockley, who on Skokholm Island created Britain’s first bird observatory. When Buxton was imprisoned, Lockley advised him to bird-watch, concentrating on one species.

He duly found pleasure in watching a breeding pair of redstarts ‘unconcerned by our fatuous politics’. Bird-watching enthused the camp – even some surreptitious guards. Thanks to a 16-strong team of inmates, from April to June no bird pair has ever been watched so continuously – 850 hours non-stop.

Buxton acknowledged that birds do not have ‘man’s massive individuality’ but they nonetheless differ in character. Redstarts are not outstanding songsters, but the Eichstätt male was brilliant, even at mimicry. Singing had three successive functions: claiming territory, attracting a mate and, with added tail displays, guiding her to his chosen nest site.

Redstarts nest in holes and so this pair happily occupied a makeshift nestbox. He sang while she built – working incessantly (8.47am to 7.38pm) – and also during the laying and incubation of the eggs. He then fell silent till the chicks were fledged.

‘Men have all the fun, while women do all the work,’ said the late Fay Weldon. This applies to most birds.

Buxton’s book gleaned redstart facts from other sources: their pulse rate is 980 a minute. Thus the oldest thenknown redstart, which died at six, clocked as many heartbeats as a human octogenarian. Life expectancy is among the shortest – 9.3 months.

Redstarts migrate from the subSaharan trans-African Sahel zone. In September 1965, freak weather drove a massive ‘fall’ of migrants onto Britain’s eastern coastline. Between Lowestoft and Minsmere alone, half a million birds, including 250,000 redstarts, found refuge.

Seventy years ago, redstarts bred throughout mainland Britain. Today, an amber-rated decline to 135,000 pairs finds most in the west, especially Wales. As a beneficiary of a redstart-filled Berwickshire childhood, I am pleased to learn from the distinguished botanist and borderer David Low that they hold on in the Borders ‘quite well’.

The black redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros) is very rare in Britain, with a winter population double its 100-odd breeding pairs. They like rubble, hence city wastelands, first colonising here in blitzed London.