The English ortolan

I'm not equipped for bird photography: there are several much better blips of wheatears. But I spent a while stalking a pair of them along the breakwater today as they dipped from rock to rock, flashing the 'white arses' that gave them their name. Migratory birds, their scientific label Oenanthe oenanthe means 'wine flower' in Greek because the birds return there as the vines begin to bloom in spring.
The northern wheatear winters in sub-Saharan Africa whence they fly vast distances to their summer haunts in northern Europe and Asia, Greenland and Alaska. Tracking devices have shown them to have one of the longest of migratory flights, up to 18,000 miles a round trip.

The birds I saw today are heading south towards the English Channel. In past centuries the coastal counties presented a serious hazard to the once-numerous wheatears, because these little birds were considered a highly desirable gourmet treat: 'the English ortolan' in fact. On the open downland sheep pastures of Kent, shepherds once made small fortunes from trapping wheatears in special 'coops' or traps, formed from carefully poised sods of earth. The wheatear is inclined to explore and shelter in such crevices and once inside they would be trapped by a noose of horsehair. They were caught in such vast numbers that shepherds made more money from selling them during the late summer than from their entire annual wage. The birds would be purchased by local poultry suppliers who sold them on to wealthy urban customers.

The Victorian naturalist and bird lover W.H.Hudson wrote that in past times
the charm of the bird (on the table) is so rapturously dwelt upon, with such an air of rolling a fat delicious morsel in the mouth, and smacking the lips after deglutition, and stroking a well-satisfied stomach, that one is led to think that the happiness of the great, the wise, and the good of that age was centred in their bellies, and that they looked on the eating of wheatears as the highest pleasure man could know.
(One cannot help but be reminded of President Mitterand's final meal of ortolans, in 1996, after which he resigned himself to await death. The birds are eaten whole and the sight is so disgusting that the convention is to drape a napkin over the entire face during the proceedings.)

So highly desirable were wheatears that it was customary for eager consumers to visit the shepherds' traps directly, remove the birds and leave money in payment. W.H. Hudson again:

A middle-aged man, a native of the village of East Dean, described to me how a very great lady of Eastbourne, who entertained a good deal, and liked her birds fresh caught, used often to go out driving in a carriage and pair on the downs; and he, a boy of twelve, used to run after the carriage in hopes of getting a penny; and how, on arriving at a number of coops, the big liveried footman would jump down and uncover coop after coop and wring the necks of the little birds he took out, until he had got as many as his mistress wanted, and then she would hand him the money to leave in a trench, and the carriage would drive off.

Hudson, who was instrumental in establishing the RSPB and in promoting legislation to protect birds, deplored the slaughter.
The wheatear is a pretty, interesting bird, a sweet singer, and dear to all who love the wildness and solitude of hills and of desert, stony places. It is not fair that it should be killed merely to enable London stockbrokers, sporting men, and other gorgeous persons who visit the coast, accompanied by ladies with yellow hair, to feed every day on "ortolans" at the big Brighton hotels.

Towards the end of the 19th century the trade in wheatears dropped off as shepherds were forbidden to spend so much time catching the birds; in addition their numbers decreased as the downlands were ploughed up and their habitat was lost. Now they are fewer in number, mainly confined to the west and north of the UK and no longer an acceptable morsel on our dinner tables - although this does not mean they are safe in other countries on the continent or, like the swallows I blipped recently, in Africa itself.

Quotes from Chapter VII, Nature in Downland, W.H.Hudson, 1923.