VII HENICU RIDAE—TIMELIIDAE 501 
Wagtails hunting for flies round cattle, and being very commonly 
seen wading. Pipits make their nests almost entirely of grass, 
Anthus correndera and A. rufulus occasionally adding an over- 
arching cover ; Wagtails use moss, grass, and roots, with a bedding 
of hair and feathers. The four to six eggs are bluish white or 
brownish, with grey, blackish, or brown spots in the Pied Wag- 
tail and its similarly coloured allies, yellowish-white with yellowish 
and greenish-brown markings in others of the Sub-family ; in 
Pipits they are commonly greyish or yellowish-white with brown 
and grey mottlings, sometimes covering the whole shell; while in 
the Tree-Pipit they vary from grey with dark brown spots and 
streaks to reddish-white, with rich brown, claret-colour, or bright 
red markings or close frecklings. A black line or two is a com- 
mon feature throughout the Family. Wagtails choose for nesting 
sites ledges of rocks, crevices, holes in trees or walls, tops of 
pollarded willows, stony banks, or—in the Yellow Wagtail group 
—hollows in the soil among herbage. Pipits prefer the ground, 
or even spots shaded by trees, as in the Tree-Pipit. 
Fam. III. Henicuridae.—The Fork-tails, a group of doubtful 
affinity, generally placed near the Motacillidae, extend from the 
Himalayas and the hills of South and West China to Burma and 
the Great Sunda Islands, one of the species—some dozen in number 
—yreaching Samarcand westwards. They are black and white birds, 
with stout, straight, and usually elongated bills, long, strong 
metatarsi without scutellation, moderate rounded wings, extra- 
ordinarily long forked and graduated tails—except in Henicurus 
scouleri, where the shape is square and the feathers short 
and 
well-developed rictal bristles. The outer pair of rectrices are 
white. HA. ruficapilla has an orange-chestnut crown and hind 
neck, nearly the whole back beimg chestnut in the female; that 
sex of H. velatus has a brown head; two species have the upper 
parts spotted with white, and two the back slate-coloured. 
Several of them have crests. The bill is black, the feet whitish. 
These active unsuspicious birds haunt forest-streams or huill- 
torrents, and hunt for molluscs, insects and their larvae, near or 
in the water. They often wag the tail when perched on stones 
or branches. The large nest is formed of fibres, roots, and moss, 
and is placed on rocks or tree-stumps; the three or four eggs are 
ereenish-white, with scattered brownish spots. 
Fam. IV. Timeliidae.—In this Old World assemblage are in- 
