142 BRITISH BIRDS. 



differs in no way from our common bird, and where it 

 occurs, lives in perfect harmony with it, nesting in the 

 same fields. The accompanying- illustration is reproduced 

 from the first photograph ever taken of a nest of this 

 species in England. The nest was found by Mr. M. J. 

 Nicoll, Mr. C. B. Ticehurst and myself in a Sussex marsh, 

 on June 4th, 1905. It was exceptionally well hidden in a 

 field of very long grass and the birds were so wary that we 

 spent three and a quarter hours watching them before we 

 found the nest. It contained four young birds and an addled 

 Qgg, which with the nest did not differ materially from 

 those of the Yellow Wagtails nesting in the same field ; 

 both the parents were seen feeding and tending the 

 young. The young birds left the nest between June 5th 

 and 10th, and an attempt made by Mr. Mcoll to obtain 

 photographs of the parent birds was frustated by heavy 

 rain, which fell almost continuously between those dates. 

 The nest and addled egg are now in my collection. 



In the nomenclature of the different forms of Motacilla 

 flava I have followed that used by Dr. Hartert in his 

 " Die Yogel der palaarktischen Fauna," as being the most 

 recent revision of the genus, but in the case of our common 

 Yellow Wagtail I have retained it as a separate species 

 under a binomial. It seems only reasonable to do this, at 

 any rate for the present, since I have shown that in the 

 south of England the two birds are found breeding 

 together, even in the same field, and so they can hardly be 

 described as geographical races of one and the same species. 



[Since the above was written, two pairs to my own 

 knowledge have this year nested, one in one of the known 

 localities in Sussex, the other, which I watched feeding 

 their young on June 16th last, at a new locality in Kent ; 

 and further, we read {supra, p. 89) of an undoubted nest 

 and young having been found in Wiltshire. Mr. F. C. R. 

 Jourdain has called my attention to a record in Mr. E. 

 Cambridge Phillips' "Birds of Breconshire," 1899, p. 50, of 

 a nest found in that county by Ca23t. Sandeman. — N.F.T.] 



