SWINHOE'S WAGTAIL 15 



facing Providence Bay, about twenty feet from the ground. The 

 nest was of grasses, plastered together with mud and lined with a few 

 feathers, as in a robin's nest. It was fastened rather firmly into the 

 nesting cranny. Unfortunately, I fell with the nest, breaking the 

 eggs. The parent birds hovered overhead all the time I was attempt- 

 ing to climb the rotten walls, one of them having flushed from the 

 nest when I first discovered it." 



Theodore Pleske (1928) mentions a nest and six eggs of Swinhoe's 

 wagtail, taken on June 19, 1902, at the mouth of the Elijdep River, of 

 which he says: "The nest is large, solidly built and thick-walled; 

 it is made of dry grass blades of the preceding year interwoven with 

 twigs, sometimes fairly thick, of a small shrub, probably Betula 

 nana, and tufts of moss or lichen. The inner layer of the nest is 

 formed of finer grass so arranged that the material becomes finer and 

 finer toward the lining. The cavity itself is abundantly furnished 

 with hair of the wild reindeer very skilfully selected from the finest 

 tufts and in addition a feather of the Snowy Owl {Nyctea nyctea).'''' 



A set of five eggs in the Wilson C. Hanna collection was taken near 

 Lake Baikal on May 80, 1898, from a nest situated on the ground, 

 composed of roots and moss and lined with fur. 



Eggs. — Five or six eggs generally constitute the full set for the 

 Swinhoe's wagtail. Mr, Pleske (1928) describes the eggs referred 

 to above as follows: "The eggs have a white ground color covered 

 with small spots of a drab brown (Ridgway, PI. 46, drab) uniformly 

 disposed over the surface and forming a wreath at the large end and 

 a small number of black lines on the large ends of some of the eggs." 



Mr. Hanna describes his eggs as ovate in shape, slightly glossy 

 white, and thickly marked, more heavily on the large ends, with fine 

 markings of "buffy brown," "buffy olive," and "light brownish olive." 



The measurements of 26 eggs average 20.1 by 15.0 millimeters; the 

 eggs showing the 4 extremes measure 22.0 by 15.8, 17.3 by 14.5, and 19.9 

 by 14.1 millimeters. 



Plumages. — As Swinhoe's wagtail is considered to be only a sub- 

 species of the common white wagtail, its molts and plumages probably 

 follow the same sequence, as fully described in Witherby's Hand- 

 book (1919). 



In Nelson's "The Birds of Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean" (1883) , 

 facing page 63, there is a fine colored plate of an adult male in full 

 spring plumage, which shows the characters of the subspecies very 

 clearly. And in Turner's "Contributions to the Natural History of 

 Alaska" (1886), facing page 178, there is a good colored plate of the 

 adult and young in winter. 



La Touche (1930) says of the immature plumages: "Young birds 

 are entirely dull grey on the upper parts, the forehead grey of a 



