274 MOTACILLID/E. 



p. 250 ; Scully, Sir. F. 1876, p. 150 ; Broolss, Str. F. 1877, p. 472 ; Blanf., 

 /. c. p. 246; Hume, t. c. p. 329 ; Seebohm, Ibis, 1878, p. 344 ; Brooks, Str. F. 

 1878, ii. p. 140; Legge, B. Ceylon, p. 219; Hume, Str. F. 1879 P- IO 3 ; 

 War dlaw- Ramsay, Ibis, 1880, p. 60; Reid, Sir. F. 1881, p. 48. Motacilla 

 dukhunensis, Jerd., B. Ind. ii. p. 218 (nee Sykes). Motacilla Cashmeriensis, 

 Brooks, Pr. As. Socy. Beng. 1871, p. 289; id., J. A. S. Beng. xli. p. 82 ; 

 id., Str. F. 1874, p. 456. The BLACK- FACED WAGTAIL. 



Adult male. A broad frontal band extending to the front of the eye and 

 forming a narrow supercilium, white ; sides of the face, ear coverts, chin, 

 throat, lower parts from below the breast and under wing coverts white ; 

 crown and nape black ; breast black ; back, rump and upper tail coverts grey, 

 the upper tail coverts darker; primaries dusky brown, the outer webs darker ; 

 secondaries and tertiaries darker brown, margined on their outer webs and 

 tipped with white ; the secondaries margined for the basal half on their inner 

 webs with white ; tail black, the two outermost feathers on each side white, except 

 a dark brown margin on their inner webs. Bill and legs black ; irides brown. 



Length. 7-5 to 8 inches ; wing 3-6 to 37 inches; tail 4-5 to 475; bill at 

 front 075. 



Hab. Sind, Punjab, N.-W. Provinces, Oudh, Central Provinces, Beloo- 

 chistan, Persia, South Afghanistan, East Turkistan ; also in Rajputana. A 

 winter visitant throughout India ; breeds in Persia and Cashmere. 



The Wagtails of India have been fully treated of by Mr. Hume, in Vols. I. 

 and II. of Stray Feathers, in respect to the distinctness of the several species 

 occurring in India, and the outcome of his investigations has placed the 

 present species under the name it bears here. " In winter," Mr. Hume 

 says, " both M. personata and dulthenensis = alba entirely lose in both sexes 

 the black of the head, which is replaced in the male by a dark, in the 

 female by a light, grey. The black of the chin, throat, and breast is 

 reduced in dukhenensis = alba to a moderately broad more or less crescentic 

 pectoral band with two ill-defined broken blackish stripes running up the 

 side of the neck, as it were from the points of the crescent, which stripes 

 never, he thinks, entirely disappear, though in some specimens they become 

 entirely obsolete ; the br&ad white frontal band remains unchanged in width 

 or nearly so in the adult male, though its colour is less pure ; but in the 

 female it is greatly diminished in width so as in some specimens to become 

 almost obsolete ; while in all specimens it is more or less overlaid with sordid 

 grey. In personata, on the other hand, the whole breast always remains 

 black, and though the chin and upper part of the throat are white, the lower 

 part of the throat is still more or less speckled with black. In the perfect 

 winter plumage of both species, the amount of the black on the breast, sides 

 of the neck and throat at once serve to distinguish the two species, but 

 specimens of alba changing into winter plumage often (so far as the 

 amount of black on the throat is concerned) exactly resemble the perfect 

 winter plumage of personata, and the only ready and unfailing diagnosis of the 



