392 Mr. A. L. Butler on Birds observed 



(ii.) Motacilla flava cinereocapilla Savi ? 



a. S . Khor Arbat, 6. 5. 08. 



Mr. M. J. Nicoll, who has kindly noted his opinions on 

 the labels of a large series o£ Yellow Wagtails collected by 

 me in the Sudan, has marked this bird M. f. flava. It has, 

 however, much more white on the throat than any of my 

 large series of that form, and, though it has a broad and 

 distinct white eyebrow, the lores and ear-coverts are very 

 dark blackish grey, and the ear-coverts shew no traces of 

 white. I should call it M. f. cinereocapilla with an unusually 

 well-defined superciliary stripe. The testes were of the size 

 of hemp-seeds. 



(iii.) Motacilla flava pygmoBa A. E. Brehm ? 



a. S ■ Khor Arbat, 12. 5. 08. 



I have atypical specimen of this well-marked small resident 

 Egyptian race, with a wing of 73 mm., kindly given me by 

 Mr. M. J. Nicoll. My Khor Arbat bird almost exactly 

 agrees with it, but has a wing of 78 mm. ; it was apparently 

 paired with a female which I did not get. There were only 

 two birds in all, in what seemed quite a likely breeding- 

 place, near permanent running water. The testes of this 

 bird were enlarged to about the size of hemp-seeds, as in the 

 bird referred to M. f. cinereocapilla. These are the only two 

 Yellow Wagtails that I have shot in the Sudan in the spring 

 in which the testes have been at all enlarged. 



I notice that in Mr. Nicoll's Egyptian specimen of M. f. 

 pygmoia the longest secondary exceeds the longest primary 

 by 1 ram. I have before me some fifty skins of Yellow 

 Wagtails, including M.f. rail, M.f.fiaim, M.f. melanocephala, 

 M. /. melanogrisea, M. f. borealis, &c., and this is the only 

 bird in which this is the case. I do not knovr if this is the 

 rule in M.f. pygmfEa, but if so, the slight difierence in the 

 proportionate length of primaries and secondaries in the non- 

 migratory bird would be interesting. In my slightly larger 

 Khor Arbat bird, however, the secondaries fall short of the 

 primaries by 7 mm. 



