GEEY WAGTAIL — YELLOW WAGTAIL. 77 



' A winter haunt of the Grey Wag-tail/ and truly remarks — 

 ' He is content with sluggish water if he can find none that is 

 rapid ; but the sound of falling water is as surely grateful 

 to his ear as the tiny crustaceans he feeds on are to his 

 palate^ (p. ii). At the periods of migration it is more 

 g-enerally diffused. Soon after the beginning* of March the 

 Grey Wagtail leaves us, and the instances in which it has been 

 seen in late spring or summer are easily enumerated. One 

 which had assumed the black throat of summer was killed at 

 Weston-on-the-Green in the spring of 1846 [Zoologist, 3536). 

 In the Slimmer of 1875, Mr. C. M. Prior repeatedly saw a 

 pair in an osier-bed on the banks of the Swere in the parish 

 of South Newington. They frequently carried food in their 

 beaks and were much agitated when he came close^ but he was 

 unable to discover the nest [Zoologist, 1879, p. 179). The 

 Swere is a rather rapid stream in places. A pair seem to 

 have remained during the summer of 1884 in the stream at 

 Kingham, where they were seen in mid July, and possibly 

 nested somewhere about the mill flood-gates (W. W. Fowler 

 in lit.). On the i ith April, 1885, I saw a pair at a spring in 

 a railway cutting near Adderbury, and Mr. A. H. Macpherson 

 saw a single bird on the banks of the Cherwell near Islip 

 on the 26th June, 1886. Writing to me on the nth August, 

 1884, Mr. Fowler reported that they had a small visitation of 

 Grey Wagtails haunting the Kingham brook; these must 

 have been unusually early migrants, and came probably from 

 the Cotswold streams. 



THE YELLOW WAGTAIL. ^ '"' 



Motacilla raii. 

 Ray's, or the Yellow, Wagtail is a common summer visitor, 

 arriving about the second week in April and leaving before the 

 end of September. Showing less preference for the vicinity of 

 water than do its congeners, this species is often locally known 

 as the Land Wagtail, and though often to be found in the 



