ioi8 WAGTAIL 



WAGTAIL {JFagsterd and TFagshjri, 15th cent, fide Th. Wright, 

 Vol. Vocahul. ii. pp. 221, 253; Uuagtale, Turner, 1544, p. 53), the 

 little bird that delights us equally by its neat coloration, its slender 

 form, its nimble actions and its sprightly notes.^ Since it is so 

 generally dispersed, especially in summer, throughout the British 

 Islands, it needs no further description. 



The Pied Wagtail of authors, it is the Motacilla^ luguhris of 

 modern ornithology, or M. yarrelli of some writers, and has for its 

 very near ally — if indeed it be not merely a local race of — the M. 

 alba of Linnaeus, which has a ■wide range in Europe, Asia, and 

 Africa, visiting England almost yearly, and chiefly differing from 

 the ordinary British form in its lighter-coloured tints, — the cock 

 especially having a clear grey instead of a black back. Eleven 

 other more or less nearly-allied species are recognized by Dr. Sharpe 

 (Cat. B. Brit Mus. x. pp. 456-496), who has laboriously treated the 

 complicated synonymy of this group of birds. Eight of them are 

 natives of Asia, several wintering in India, and one, M. ocularis, 

 even reaching Alaska, while the rest are confined to Africa. No 

 colours but black, grey or white enter into the plumage of any ot 

 the foregoing ; but in the species peculiar to Madagascar, M. fla.vi- 

 ventris, as well as in that which it much resembles, the so-called 

 Grey Wagtail of Britain, 71/. melano2)e (M. boarula or sulphurea of 

 some authors), a great part of the lower surface is yellow. This is 

 one of the most graceful of birds, and though having a very wide 

 range in the world at large is curiously local in its distribution in 

 Britain, being almost wholly confined in the breeding-season to the 

 neighbourhood of rocky streams in the west and north, and a line 

 drawn from the Start Point, slightly curving to include the Derby- 

 shire hills, and ending at the mouth of the Tees, will, it is believed, 

 mark off" its breeding-range in England. Then there is a section 

 which by some systematists has been raised to the rank of a genus, 

 Budytes, containing the Wagtails" in which yellow takes a still more 

 prominent part in their coloration. Of these, 8 species, besides 

 several subspecies, are recognized by Dr. Sharpe {ut supra, pp. 503- 

 532). One of these is the common Yellow Wagtail of England, 



^ It is the Dishwasher of some parts of England, in others it has the endear- 

 ing nickname of Molly or Polly Washdish, with which may be compared the Ice- 

 landic Mariu-erla, and of course the French Lavandiere and Batte-lessive. 



2 The genus Motacilla (an exact rendering of the English "Wagtail," the 

 Dutch Kwikstaart, the Italian Codatremola and other similar words), which, as 

 originally founded by Linnajus, contained nearly all the "soft-billed" birds of 

 early English ornithologists, was restricted by various authors in succession, fol- 

 lowing the example set by Scopoli in 1769, until none but the Wagtails remained 

 in it. Most of the rest are now commonly classed as Sylviidae (Warbler), while 

 the Wagtails with the Pipits, and possibly some others, constitute the Family 

 MotacillidsB. 



