198 BRITISH BIRDS. 
and the wings, which are dark brown. The chin, throat, and upper breast 
are black, which joins the black of the back at the shoulder, isolating the 
white on the sides of the neck from the white of the rest of the under- 
parts. Bill black; legs, feet, and claws black ; irides dark brown. The 
female in summer plumage closely resembles the male; but the upper 
parts are much greyer and mottled only with black. After the autumn 
moult the black on the throat and breast is reduced to a crescentic band 
across the latter, and the white on'the throat is only separated from the 
white of the underparts by the grey on the back, which extends to the 
sides of the neck and flanks. 
The changes of plumage which this bird undergoes appear never to have 
been fully described, though it is somewhat extraordinary that they should 
have been overlooked, since those of the nearly allied White Wagtail have 
been so accurately pointed out by Naumann. Young in first plumage 
have every feather of the upper and underparts, except the wings 
and tail, grey, shading into nearly black on the upper and into nearly 
white on the under tail-coverts. They moult this plumage in the first 
autumn ; but the colour of the upper parts is scarcely changed, except 
that the forehead and the sides of the head have become white, more or less 
suffused with yellow*. The underparts are much whiter, the chin and 
throat being white, more or less suffused with yellow, the black cres- 
eentic band appears on the breast, and the head is more or less mottled 
with black in the male, but not in the female. In the following spring 
they moult into fully adult plumage, except that the black on the back 
is more or less mottled with grey. At the second autumn moult, when 
the birds are a little more than a year old, the fully adult winter plumage 
is assumed. 
Apparently, at all seasons and at all ages, after the first moult, the Pied 
Wagtail may be distinguished from the White Wagtail by its very dark 
rump, the upper tail-coverts only being dark in the latter species. Strange 
to say, in the extreme east of Asia, breeding in the lower valley of the 
Amoor and North China, and wintering in South China and the Burma 
peninsula, M. leucopsis, a still nearer ally of the Pied Wagtail, occurs. 
When fully adult it appears to differ only in having the white on the wing 
developed to a much greater extent. 
* Some writers have attempted to discriminate between M. alba and M, dukhunensis on 
the ground that the young of the former are yellowish about the head, whilst the young 
of the latter never have this yellow tinge. There can be no doubt that birds of the year, 
both from Eastern Asia and from Western Europe, are sometimes with and sometimes 
without this yellow tinge. 
