238 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ORNITHOLOGY OF INDIA. 



593 quau— Budytes flava, Lin. (26.) 



This is the Long-hind-clawed Yellow "Wagtail, with the pale 

 slatey blue head, and conspicuous white supercilium. In fact 

 at all seasons, and in both sexes, the conspicuous white super- 

 cilium suffices to distinguish this species. Our Indian birds are 

 precisely identical with specimens that I have from Westphalia 

 and Sweden, and the Andaman birds differ in no respect 

 from Indian birds. This wagtail is the only one that is com- 

 mon in the Andamans. We only got one at all iti full plumage. 

 Lord Walden, Ibis, 1873, p. 308, gives Budytes viridis of 

 Gmelin. I don't know what species this is ; but I take it to be 

 the same as viridis, Scop., which is, as I make out, the winter 

 plumage of melanocephala, Licht. The yellow wagtail which 

 has no conspicuous supercilium, and which has the head green 

 in the winter and black in the breeding season. I have seen no 

 specimens of this from the Andamans, and we collected wag- 

 tails vigorously everywhere. It remains to be seen whether 

 Lord Walden means the same species by viridis as I do, or 

 whether he assigns the name of viridis to what I call cinereoca- 

 pilla or flava. 



In winter plumage cinereocapilla is not, unless one has espe- 

 cially studied the group, to be distinguished from viridis. 



Davison says : — " Flava is excessively abundant both at the 

 Andamans and Nicobars ; wherever the country is bare it occurs 

 in large flocks, or scattered in parties over the hill sides and in 

 the paddy flats. I have also met with stragglers along the sea 

 shore on those parts of the islands that are thickly wooded 

 almost to the water's edge. I found them very numerous on 

 my arrival at the Andamans in December, and they appeared 

 to be just as numerous in May, although many of them were 

 apparently far advanced in the breeding plumage. I was told 

 that they arrive at the Andamans about November, and leave 

 again about the latter end of May." 



We have a female with the rich fulvous tinge on the 

 breast which characterizes this sex of flava, killed at Port 

 Blair on the 1st June by Captain YVimberley, and we have 

 numerous specimens, mostly young birds, killed by him in the 

 first week of September, so that the birds are only absent from 

 the Andamans, at most three months. How much more com- 

 mon this species is than cinereocapilla may be judged from the 

 fact that we have secured altogether 26 specimens of the pre- 

 sent species, and only two of cinereocapilla. I saw this species 

 on the Cocos and Table Island at Preparis, in Macpherson's 

 Straits., and at most of the islands of the Nicobar group. 



