GREY WAGTAIL. 67 
GREY WAGTAIL. 
Moracinua MELANOPS, Pallas. 
Pl. X., figs. 84, 35. 
Geogr. distr.— Europe as far northward as N. Germany and Great 
Britain; Asia as far east as Japan and as far south as Java; partially 
resident, but local in Britain, breeding chiefly in the N. of England 
and Scotland. 
Food.—Insects and Mollusca. 
Nest.—Neatly constructed of rootlets or moss, and a few dry grass- 
stalks; thickly lined with cow’s hair, usually of a white colour. 
Position of nest.—Concealed by herbage upon banks under over- 
hanging rocks, or in forks of trees near w river or stream; also in 
fallow ground. 
Number of eggs.—5. 
Time of nidrfication.—_IV-V1; commencing towards the end of 
April. 
This species has bred in Cornwall, Devonshire, Somerset- 
shire, Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Kent, Derbyshire, 
Cumberland, and Westmoreland ; but it is commoner in the 
Northern Counties; the fact of its occurrence in Kent, 
though already recorded, is confirmed by a nest which I 
obtained at Kemsley, in Kent, on the 16th May, 1885 ; it 
was built on the ground behind a clod of earth in a fallow 
field, and was discovered by a boy whilst ploughing: this 
boy took me to the spot, and the bird flew off the nest as 
we approached. The nest is formed of root fibre mixed 
with coarse grasses, cow- and horse-hair, and is lined with 
black horse-hair, white cow-hair, and wool; it originally 
contained four eggs of the ordinary type, but one was 
broken by the fall of a piece of earth into the nest as it 
was being removed ; they ave slightly larger than the eggs 
of the Pied Wagtail, and are rather closely mottled with 
pale yellowish brown, which gives them a stone-grey tint. 
The song of the Grey Wagtail is like that of the Meadow 
Pipit. 
