Definition of "whinchat" [whin•chat]

• A small brownish Old World songbird (Saxicola rubetra) often found in open country. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "A teenage twitcher and a small buff-coloured songbird called the whinchat were the keys that turned the Iron Curtain's landscape of barbed wire, mined death strips and Kalashnikov-toting border guards into what is probably the most enduring green success story in Europe since the Cold War."
• "To my delight, when I visited I discovered several wheatears, along with another passage migrant, the whinchat, all feeding to build up their fat reserves before undertaking the epic journey south to Africa."
• "Some greenfinches, a whinchat or two, almost no pipits or larks, and very few sparrows."