Find your own stonechats
The hibernans form of European Stonechat is a common, fiercely territorial and sparsely distributed bird of lowland heath, grassland and marshland in Britain, and in the breeding season you are more likely to find it in the south, coastal regions of Wales, and western and north-western England and Scotland.
Come autumn and winter, you may find birds almost anywhere on passage, particularly in grassland and low scrub, and in less optimal but similar habitat in the heart of winter. Look out for lone birds, particularly males, perching prominently on high grass and reed heads or bush branches, and the female will usually be nearby (sometimes even with a Dartford Warbler tagging along!).
Hard winters can reduce numbers substantially, but these can replenish fairly rapidly, perhaps from the near-Continent as well as from local breeding birds. The European subspecies rubicola is believed to occur by many unofficially – perhaps even to breed at times – and birds closely resembling this form have been recorded on numerous occasions, though the true variation of these two subspecies is not entirely known and rubicola has never been admitted to any authority’s British list.
The three forms of Siberian Stonechat on the British list have mostly been recorded at the well-known coastal migration and vagrancy hot-spots, and it is at those that you might hope to discover maurus in particular. By far the most frequent form of this rare species to occur in Britain, maurus has even bred in Finland occasionally and multiple individuals can occur in some autumns; one recently overwintered inland in Nottinghamshire in 2009. Shetland, Portland, Dorset, and Scilly all have several records, while other migration watchpoints have sometimes logged more than one occurrence.
The east Asian subspecies stejnegeri is also now known to make it to Britain, and there is one accepted record from Portland in October 2012, but where it will occur next is anybody’s guess – again, coastal watchpoints are most likely, and the same locations are your best bet for turning up a Caspian Stonechat, too.
Caspian – like Stejneger’s, another potential split – is still a mega rarity, but has been recorded this century on Fair Isle (2014), Scilly (2013) and Mainland, Shetland (2006).