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SOME NOTES ON THE WHITE WAGTAIL. 
Rev. H. A. MACPHERSON, M.A., M.B.O.U., Etc., 
Author of the‘ Visitation of Pallas's Sand-Grouse to Scotland,’ etc. 
My friend Mr. F. B. Whitlock has asked me to supplement his 
notes on the White Wagtail (A/otact//a alba), and I gladly accede 
to his request. My experience, however, of the species in England 
relates solely to observations upon migratory birds in April and 
September ; except, indeed that I have seen the species apparently 
interbreeding with the common Pied Wagtail. As Mr. Seebohm 
pointed out some years ago, this species can at all times be dis- 
tinguished by its grey upper tail coverts ; but I did not shoot the 
bird that was apparently paired to a Pied Wagtail. We, in the 
North-West of England, consider the White Wagtail a scarce spring 
visitant, observed on migration almost every year, generally alone or 
in company with other individuals of its own species. The stay of 
such birds is generally limited to a few days. My predecessor, the 
late Mr. T. C. Heysham, was perhaps the first man to detect the 
species in Cumberland, in the month of April 1842; and he met 
with a second specimen in April 1848. I am not aware that he met 
with the species in autumn, and though large numbers of Pied 
Wagtails appear at that season on the Solway, I have only once 
observed the White Wagtail at that season in Cumberland, though 
I posséss the skin of a second autumn-killed bird, shot by the late 
Blackett Greenwell. 
Mr. Whitlock quotes a renurk of mine that it has always appeared 
to me that the call-note of the White Wagtail ‘is softer and less 
incisive than that of the Pied Wagtail.’ To this I still adhere ; and 
though my ear may be less correct than that of some of my friends, 
I have really no gee as to the difference between the call-notes 
of the two speci 
The White Wagtail has occurred to me in Norway, and in 
different parts of France, in Holland, in Spain and Germany. Its 
nesting habits are very similar to, if not indeed identical with, those 
of the Pied Wagtail. One pair that I noticed daily a few weeks 
bird was pugnacious in driving away other small birds from the 
~iaegemae vicinity. In Germany I found nests in holes in walls, 
in roots of trees, and one on a shelf in a tool-house. I never 
happened to find a nest in Switzerland, but we observed young 
birds being fed by their parents as late as the month of September, 
and these no doubt were a second brood. 
July 1891 
