PIED WAGTAIL. 65 
Famity MOTACILLIDA. 
PIED WAGTAIL. 
Moraciuua LuGuBris, Temm. 
Pl. X., figs. 29-31. 
Geogr. distr.—Western Europe, southward to the western portion 
of N. Africa; common and generally distributed in Great Britain. 
Food.—Larve, insects, Mollusca, and small fish. 
_ Nest.—Formed of dry grass-stalks and rootlets or moss; thickly 
lined with wool or feathers and hair. 
Position of nest.—In ivy on the top of a low wall, in a faggot-stack 
or a hole in the sloping grassy bank of a deserted chalk pit, or roadside 
ae a deserted Sand Martin’s hole, a heap of stones, or a hole ina 
wall. 
Number of eggs.—4-6. 
Time of nidification. --IV-V1; end of May. 
I have known the Yellow Bunting, the Pied Wagtail, and 
the Robin to build in the same hole in the bank of a 
chalk-pit in consecutive years; as is usually the case 
with holes commonly selected for nesting purposes, this 
cavity and one or two others in the same pit were clearly 
visible from the road, distant from them about eighty feet 
or more; indeed, as a matter of fact, very few nests are 
so well concealed as to escape the practised eye of a 
naturalist after a few years’ training, although in his 
first season or two of birds’ nesting, his attention may 
only be arrested by the sudden flight of the parent bird 
from its habitation. 
The nest varies in size and strength, some specimens 
being very loosely and carelessly constructed, whilst others 
are solid, firmly felted, and like some formed by the 
Greenfinch, but with more nearly the lining of a Redpoll’s 
nest ; the materials, however, vary but little: I have every 
stage of perfection before me, and, hadI not taken them all 
myself, 1 should have been inclined to believe that the eggs 
(which are almost identical in all) had been placed in nests 
formed by other birds; they much resemble in colouring 
some of the lighter varieties of eggs of the House Sparrow, 
but are better formed, being less elongated and more pointed 
at the smaller end. 
