WHINCHAT photo credit: Parrotletsuk.typepad.com

 Whinchat, Redstart, and Redchat:  Debunking the “Speciation” Myth Again

Dr. James J. S. Johnson

Are not two sparrows [στρουθια] sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows [στρουθιων].   (Matthew 10:29-31)

Are not five sparrows [στρουθια] sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?  But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows [στρουθιων].   (Luke 12:6-7)

It’s good to know that we are worth far more, to God Himself, than many “sparrows”.  However, the term “sparrows” (as quoted above) is an English translation of the New Testament Greek noun strouthion, a fairly general word for “small bird’ that can include many varieties of perching songbirds, in general, including yet not limited to the birds we label “sparrows”(1) —  including the Whinchat, a sometimes inconspicuous little songbird that resembles a thrush, wheatear, or a flycatcher.  (Or maybe a redstart?)

WHINCHAT Scottish Ornithologists’ Club

It was my privilege, on July 13^th of AD2006, to view a Whinchat (Saxicola rubetra) among some roadside weeds, while in the fine company of my wonderful wife (Sherry) and Dr. Bill Cooper, England’s top-tier gentleman and scholar.

The bird-book that I was using, that day (as Laird Bill drove us along a motorway between Harwich and London), described the common Whinchat as follows:

Restless, short-tailed chat that perches openly on bush-tops, tall weeds and fences, flicking its wings and tail. Males in summer distinctive.  Females and autumn birds can be confused with the female Stonechat, but Whinchat’s conspicuous creamy eyebrows, boldly streaked rump and white wedges at base of tail (often noticed as birds flick tail to balance in the wind) are reliable fieldmarks.

[Quoting Chris Knightley & Steve Madge, POCKET GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF BRITAIN AND NORTH-WEST EUROPE (Yale Univ. Press, 1998), page 212.]  The Whinchat is a summer migrant, visiting (and nesting in) Great Britain and much of western Europe during the spring and summer months, migrating south to northwestern Africa for the winter months.  Its habits are typical of many other insect-eating passerines:

Nests on heaths, grassy moors, rough fields, damp rushy meadows and young coniferous plantations. Like Stonechat, pounces to the ground for insects, returning to same slightly elevated perch or flying quickly to another sprig nearby.  Broken song mixes short musical phrases with dry churrs and distinct pauses.  Call an agitated tu-tek, tu-tek-tek. Widespread on migration, often in some numbers in coastal bushes and fields.

[Again quoting Chris Knightley & Steve Madge, POCKET GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF BRITAIN AND NORTH-WEST EUROPE (Yale Univ. Press, 1998), page 212.]

The Whinchat has other names, including Paapje (Dutch), Braunkehlchen (German), Traquet tarier (French), and Buskskvätta (Swedish: “bush chat”).  [See Roger Tory Peterson, Guy Mountfort, & P.A.D. Hollom, BIRDS OF BRITAIN AND EUROPE (Houghton Mifflin / Peterson Field Guides, 5^th rev. ed., 1993), pages 175-176.]  Moreover, to the chagrin of taxonomic “splitters”, the Whinchat is known to hybridize with the Siberian Stonechat and the Common (European) Stonechat of western (and southern) Europe.  [See Eugene McCarthy, HANDBOOK OF AVIAN HYBRIDS OF HE WORLD (Oxford, 2006), page 238.] – proving that those 3 chats descend form a common ancestor pair that survived the worldwide Flood aboard Noah’s Ark.

More surprising, to the birding community, is the capture and DNA verification (by the Lista Bird Observatory in Vest-Agder, Norway, during September AD2013) of a hybrid parented by male Common Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) and a female Whinchat (Saxicola rubetra), published in the Journal of Ornithology.(2)

Common Redstart x   Whinchat HYBRID

Photograph by Jonas Langbråten

(18 Sept. AD2013, Lista Bird Observatory, Vest-Agder, Norway)

The male Redstart-Whinchat hybrid was captured by bird-banding volunteers, near the southern tip of Norway’s peninsula.

“We have a standardized bird banding project where we mark migratory birds in the spring and autumn. We have volunteer bird watchers going every hour to catch birds in mist nets to band them,” says Jan Erik Røer from the Norwegian Ornithological Society.

[Quoting Ingrid Spilde’s “Mysterious Bird was Unique Cross of Two Unrelated [sic] Species”, Science Nordic, (3-11-AD2015), at http://sciencenordic.com/mysterious-bird-was-unique-cross-two-unrelated-species . ]

The hybrid’s unofficial name is rødskvett (“redchat”), blending parts of the Norwegian words (Buskskvett and Rødstjert) for its two parents.

Needless to say, this little “redchat” has caused a lot of confusion and controversy among evolutionists at the Natural History Museum in Oslo, where the “speciation” mythology (of supposed biogenetic divergence, “13.3 million years” ago) is popularly taught, as if there was real “science” (empirical or forensic) to support that imaginary scenario.(3)

Once again the “speciation” myth of “natural selection”-advocating evolutionists, both theistic and atheistic, is debunked by the real-world evidence.

References

1. When the Lord Jesus referred to God’s watchcare over “sparrows” (English translation for Greek strouthion], He used a Greek word that is more general in its categorical coverage than is our English term “sparrow”. The Greek noun strouthion denotes a bird in the wild, possibly any small perching songbird, including but not limited to what we call “sparrows”. (In fact, the Septuagint translators used strouthion to translate the Hebrew noun tsippôr, in Psalm 84:3a [84:4a BH], which is usually translated simply as “bird” (e.g., Genesis 7:14; Deuteronomy 14:11 & 22:6; Psalm 104:1; Ezekiel 39:4) or “fowl” (e.g., Deuteronomy 4:17; Nehemiah 5:18; Ezekiel 17:23 & 39:17). The Septuagint translators also used strouthion to translate the Hebrew double-noun qe’ath-midbâr in Psalm 102:7b, a construct phrase that refers to some bird or birds that habituate open desert or semi-desert areas.)
2. See Silje Hogner, Albert Burgas Riera, Margrethe Wold, Jan T. Lifjeld, & Arild Johnsen, “Intergeneric Hybridization Between Common Redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus and Whinchat Saxicola rubetra Revealed by Molecular Analyses”, JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY, 156(3):829-836 (2015), cited in Dave Appleton’s “Common Redstart x Whinchat”, BIRD HYBRIDS (1-13-AD2016), posted at http://birdhybrids.blogspot.com/2016/01/common-redstart-x-whinchat.html . This unexpected hybrid is discussed in Ingrid Spilde’s “Mysterious Bird was Unique Cross of Two Unrelated [sic] Species”, Science Nordic (3-11-AD2015), posted at http://sciencenordic.com/mysterious-bird-was-unique-cross-two-unrelated-species .
3. See 1^st Timothy 6:20, regarding the folly of “’science’ falsely so-called”.  See also, accord, John 3:12.