Whinchats, pictured, are turning up on patches of waste ground and marshes on their way to Africa. It gives people in southeast England, and other lowland dwellers, a chance of seeing these spirited birds that spend the summer up on the moors.

They are not difficult to recognise. They are closely related to stonechats, and share the second part of their name with them because they both make loud “chack, chack” calls. The “whin” in their name is another word for gorse.

Their general shape and demeanour are like that of stonechats (which are also spreading out across the country now), but their plumage is quite different. Stonechats are sometimes called little guardsmen because the males have a black head like a busby, with a white collar beneath and a bright red breast. Whinchats have just a black cheek (or a brown one in the female), with a thick white eye stripe above it, and an attractive pale orange breast.

Both species feed by sitting on conspicuous perches and dropping down to the ground to pick up insects and spiders. In this they show that they are also relatives of the robin, although robins drop down from more concealed perches. There is another difference here between stonechats and whinchats. Both sit on the top of gorse bushes in their summer quarters, but when they move to other parts of the country, the stonechats seem to like good solid perches such as fences, whereas whinchats will sway about on top of a tall, shaky plant.

They both bob up and down and flick their tail and wings, but they fly rather differently, the stonechat speeding along like a bumblebee, while the whinchat flies low and rather jerkily from bush to bush. In summer, the males of both species perform simple song flights over their territory, just going up and down singing a few thin, warbling notes. They nest in the grass, often under a gorse bush or among bracken.

The male whinchats can fight each other quite fiercely for their territories. Sometimes, it has been observed, a male will come back late and find that his previous year’s territory has already been occupied. Then he will put up a terrific battle to get it back.

Stonechats stay here all the winter, but whinchats make a remarkable flight. They go down to the south of Europe, where they rest and feed for a while, but then they cross the Mediterranean and the Sahara desert in one spectacular leap. Many thousands of them are just on the point of doing that.

derwent.may@thetimes.co.uk