PIED WAGTAIL. 75 



together with the rather Pipit-like song- of the males, adding- 

 a charm to many a brig-ht morning already teeming with signs 

 of the opening year. Along the banks of the streams too, where 

 these present suitable shelving under-banks of mud, numbers 

 may sometimes be seen. But they are nearly all gradually 

 passing on, and although for the short time the migration 

 lasts their places may be taken by others, yet where you have 

 seen dozens one day you may not see a bird the next. In 

 April our breeding birds have settled down, and build their 

 nests in a variety of situations, often in close proximity to 

 human dwellings. The young, after they have left the nest, 

 keep with the parent birds in family parties until the latter 

 part of September draws them together in larger bands in 

 view of migration. Then again in the fine quiet days of 

 early October, as in spring, we hear their cries as they fly 

 overhead, little parties haunt the autumn ploughings, and our 

 home-bred birds g-ather toe-ether to roost in some favoured 

 spot in an osier-bed by the water side. Here at sundown the 

 birds come flying in and either pitch directly into the osiers, 

 or perch temporarily in some taller willow near at hand, the 

 call-notes of the late arrivals sounding from afar as they 

 approach the roost. I have counted as many as seventy fly in 

 in a very short time. The roost is occupied for a week or 

 two, and then by about the third week in October those that 

 intend to winter south have chiefly taken their departure, and 

 only our few winter residents remain. 



Young birds on leaving the nest have the forehead, throat, 

 and breast tinged with buff. The individual peculiarity 

 exhibited by some young moulted birds in their first autumn, 

 which have the forehead and cheeks suffused with pale but 

 bright gamboge yellow, has come under my notice in Oxon on 

 one occasion, viz. in October, 1886, when I procured an 

 example from a little flock at Great Bourton ; another bird 

 shot at the same time had not a trace of the yellow colouring, 

 although otherwise in precisely the same stage of plumage. 



