198 BRITISH BIRDS. 



and the wings, whicli are dark brown. The chin, throat, and upper breast 

 are black, which joins the black of the back at the shoulder, isolating the 

 white on the sides of the neck from the white of the rest of the under- 

 parts. Bill black ; legs, feet, and claws black ; irides dark brown. The 

 female in summer plumage closely resembles the male ; but the upper 

 parts are much greyer and mottled only with black. After the autumn 

 moult the black on the throat and breast is reduced to a crescentic band 

 across the latter, and the white o.n the throat is only separated from the 

 white of the underparts by the grey on the back, which extends to the 

 sides of the neck and flanks. 



The changes of plumage which this bird undergoes appear never to have 

 been fully described, though it is somewhat extraordinary that they should 

 have been overlooked, since those of the nearly allied White Wagtail have 

 been so accurately pointed out by Naumann. Young in first plumage 

 have every feather of the upper and underparts, except the wings 

 and tail, grey, shading into nearly black on the upper and into nearly 

 white on the under tail-coverts. They moult this plumage in the first 

 autumn ; but the colour of the upper parts is scarcely changed, except 

 that the forehead and the sides of the head have become white, more or less 

 suffused with yellow*. The underparts are much whiter, the chin and 

 throat being white, more or less suffused with yellow, the black cres- 

 centic band appears on the breast, and the head is more or less mottled 

 with black in the male, but not in the female. In the following spring 

 they moult into fully adult plumage, except that the black on the back 

 is more or less mottled with grey. At the second autumn moult, when 

 the birds are a little more than a year old, the fully adult winter plumage 

 is assumed. 



Apparently, at all seasons and at all ages, after the first moult, the Pied 

 Wagtail may be distinguished from the White Wagtail by its very dark 

 rump, the upper tail-coverts only being dark in the latter species. Strange 

 to say, in the extreme east of Asia, breeding in the lower valley of the 

 Amoor and North China, and wintering in South China and the Burma 

 peninsula, M. leucopsis, a still nearer ally of the Pied Wagtail, occurs. 

 When fully adult it appears to differ only in having the white on the wing 

 developed to a much greater extent. 



* Some writers have attempted to discriminate between M. alba and M. dukhunensis on 

 the ground that the young of the former are yellowish about the head, whilst the young 

 of the latter never have this yellow tinge. There can be no doubt that birds of the year, 

 both from Eastern Asia and fnim Western Europe, are sometimes with and sometimes 

 without this yellow tinge. 



