v A Chapter on Wagtails 1 1 1 



some miles up the river without seeing a single Wag- 

 tail, and had made up my mind that they had not 

 yet come, when, as I was returning home across the 

 Port Meadow, my dog ran into a bevy of them, and 

 sent them dancing into the air, uttering their bright 

 shrill whistle. As before, they soon settled down 

 again ; and now I noticed how hard it was to see 

 them on the ground. Their greenish-brown backs 

 assimilated admirably with the freshly-grown grass, 

 and their breasts were hardly to be distinguished 

 from the marigolds among which they had settled. 

 They were not in such numbers as in 1887, and 

 indeed they are less numerous all round us this year 

 than usual a diminution which is by no means 

 to be attributed to the depredations of mankind, as 

 some unthinking persons would have us believe in 

 the case of this and other interesting species. Few 

 birds are so little molested as the Yellow Wagtail, 

 for their nests are very hard to find, and rarely or 

 never discovered by the ploughboy ; and we must 

 be content to confess our ignorance of the causes 

 which increase or diminish their numbers. 1 



Of the nesting of the Yellow Wagtail among these 

 marigolds and buttercups I can say nothing from 



1 So too with the Gray Wagtail, which during the last year 

 has (in my experience) been far less common than it was a few 

 years ago. But this present autumn (1894) it has reappeared in 

 its accustomed winter haunts. 



