WAGTAILS. 



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analogy having been suggested by the habits of the rural laundresses, who, wading 

 into the streams, cleanse the clothes 011 a stone. It is partial to the neighbourhood 

 of old buildings and outhouses, and often nests in such situations ; and in Switzer- 

 land it seeks the mountain-chalets and cow-sheds, in search of the insects to be found 

 in the neighbourhood of domestic animals. The nest of this wagtail may be either 

 among the roots of a tree, or in a bank by the riverside, or occasionally on a shelf 

 in some outbuildings. Mr. Seebohm says that, in Siberia, the white wagtail is one 

 of the first of the soft-billed birds to arrive on the Arctic Circle in any numbers. 

 This wagtail nests two or three times in the season, rearing four or five young 

 ones in a brood ; the nest being built of dry stems of grass, moss, and fibres, closely 

 worked together and neatly lined with wool, hair, and often feathers. The eggs 



THE WHITE WAGTAIL (jj Uat. size). 



are white in ground-colour, spotted and speckled with greyish brown. When the 

 young leave the nest, they live for some weeks with their parents, haunting 

 garden-lawns and meadow-lands in search of food. The flight of the white wagtail 

 is rapid and undulating. The call-note is loud and sibilant, and the song some- 

 what pleasing, although far from powerful. The white wagtail sometimes migrates 

 in large parties, and is fond of roosting in the cover supplied by aquatic reeds. All 

 the movements of this bird are" elegant and rapid, perhaps even more so than those 

 of the closely -allied pied wagtail (M. lugubris), so well-known in the British 

 Islands as a summer visitor. White varieties of this wagtail are occasionally 

 seen, in which the characteristic pattern of plumage has become almost 

 obsolete. The adult male in the breeding-season has the forehead and sides of 

 the head pure white, the crown, back of the head, and nape jetty black ; the 

 back, rump, and upper tail-coverts pure pearl grey ; the primaries and wing-coverts 



