66 THE NESTS AND EGGS OF BRITISH BIRDS. 

 Family MOTACILLID.^. Genus Motacilla. 



GRAY WAGTAIL. 



Motacilla sulphurea, Bechsteiu. 

 Probably Double Brooded. Laying season, April to June. 



British breeding area : The Gray Wagtail is 

 pretty generally distributed in the mountain districts 

 throughout the British Islands, becoming more local in 

 the south of England. It however breeds more or less 

 sparingly on Dartmoor, Exmoor, along the district of 

 the Downs, and Salisbury Plain, From the Peak of 

 Derbyshire northwards through Scotland (including 

 some of the Inner Hebrides) the bird becomes com- 

 moner and more generally dispersed, because districts 

 suited to its requirements are more frequent. The 

 breeding area of this Wagtail in Ireland is very im- 

 perfectly known. 



Breeding habits : The favourite, almost the only, 

 breeding-grounds of the Gray Wagtail in our islands 

 are the rough wild banks of the rapid mountain streams, 

 which are fringed with alders, birches, and the mountain 

 ash, and clothed almost to the water's edge with a great 

 variety of more lowly vegetation, — long coarse grass, 

 ferns, bracken, briars, brambles, and such like. As the 

 Gray Wagtail may be found nesting in one particular 

 spot season after season, we may reasonably conclude 

 that this species pairs for life. The Gray Wagtail 

 begins to draw near its upland haunts from the low- 

 lands where it spends the winter, in February and 

 March. Each pair appears always to journey in 

 company, and to betake themselves to the particular 

 part of the mountain stream in which they have a 

 vested right. They are not social birds, and keep 

 very closely to certain reaches of the stream. The 



