Wagtails in Herefordshire. 345


WAGTAILS IN HEREFORDSHIRE.


One day towards the end of August, on a narrow lawn

between the house and the moat, and within eight yards of the

windows, I saw three species of wagtails running about. Pied;

White (M. alba)', and Grey. Furthermore, although I was unable

to verify it, I feel almost certain that a pair of white wagtails

nested here, for they were about the place in close proximity

to the house all the spring time, and I saw the male bird on

several occasions with his beak full of insects. Between the two

ponds, one of which is within a few yards of the front door, there is

a paved path, at the entrance to which is a high square archway

of old and massive oak beams, in the cross-beam of which there are

one or two crevices in a position eminently suitable for a pied

wagtail’s nest at any rate, and on this archway the white wagtails

used often to sit. Somehow or other, as they usually do, the days

and weeks fled by, and I never investigated as I had intended to.

In any case the w T hite wagtails are still here, and I have only

missed them for about six weeks, in July and part of August.


There were a great many young birds of the year; more

than two or three pairs of pied wagtails could have produced,

seeing that two pairs had to rear cuckoos ! During the last fort¬

night of September there was a notable gathering of wagtails;

juvenile pied as far as I could see. They flocked of an evening,

arriving all together, and settled in rows on the ridges of the old

barns. I counted sixty in this way on the evening of the 21st

of September, and at least tw 7 enty more had flown to the willows

on the two small islands in the two ponds, where the whole

company gathered for the night. When they arrived they looked

like a large flock of swallows, and performed various evolutions

in the air before they finally w 7 ent to roost. A very pretty sight.

They were perfectly easy to count, for they sat on the ridges of

the roofs silhouetted against the sky line, and were for the most

part about six inches apart from each other. A large number

would suddenly take wing and fly away over the meadows as if

they intended to roost elsewhere, and then in a minute or two

they returned to once more perch on the barn tops.


Hubert D. Astley.



