Mourning Wheatear

The mourning wheatear (Oenanthe lugens) is a bird, one of 14 species of wheatear found in northern Africa and the Middle East. It is a small passerine in a group formerly classed as members of the thrush family Turdidae, but now more generally considered to be part of the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae. == Taxonomy == The mourning wheatear was formally described in 1823 as Saxicola lugens by the German naturalist Hinrich Lichtenstein based on a specimen collected in Nubia. The specific epithet is from Latin lugens, lugentis meaning "mourning". The mourning wheatear is now one of around thirty wheatears placed in the genus Oenanthe that was introduced in 1816 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot. Four subspecies are recognised. O. l. halophila (Tristram, HB, 1859) – northern Sahara (eastern Morocco to northern Libya and northwestern Egypt) O. l. lugens (Lichtenstein, MHC, 1823) – Egypt (east of the Nile) to Israel, Syria, Jordan, and northern Iraq O. l. persica (Seebohm, H, 1881) – breeds southern Iran; wanders to southern Egypt, northern Sudan, and southern Israel O. l. warriae Shirihai, H & Kirwan, GM, 2011 – basalt desert of eastern Jordan and southern Syria The subspecies O. l. halophila…