98 British Birds, 



FAMILY XIV.— MOTACILLID^. 



PIED WAGTAIL~(J/^/^«7/^ lugubris ; formerly, 

 M, alba). 



White Wagtail, Black and White Wagtail, Dish- 

 washer, Washtail, Nanny Wash tail. — I think we, all 

 of us, know this familiar and very graceful bird, and 

 like to see its active run and short flight taken for 

 the purpose of capturing an insect. We have often 

 been amused, too, at seeing perhaps a whole family of 

 young ones running among the legs of the cows near 

 the water, and taking a fly now from the belly or 

 flank of the great animal, and then from its leg or the 

 ground. The nest is made of grass, bents, dead roots, 

 moss, and is sometimes found in a hole in the rude 

 wall of an old shed or the side of a haulm wall or pile 

 of furze, or in a hole in a bank ; sometimes on the 

 outside of a heap of sticks, or in thatch, or upon the 

 end of a haystack, and other analogous places. Mr. 

 Warde Fowler mentions nests as made in stacks of 

 coal piled up near a railway siding, and in creepers 

 high up on the walls of college buildings in Oxford. 

 Four or five eggs are customarily found in it, white, 

 and speckled with cinereous spots and lines, being 

 often such as to resemble one variety of the varying 

 eggs of the House Sparrow. — Fig, V^ opiate III. 



WHITE WAGTAIL— (Jf^toz//^ alba). ' 



" A rare straggler in the South of England, and in 

 Ireland." (" Ibis " List of British Birds.) 



