YELLOW WAGTAIL. 69 
YELLOW (or RAY’S) WAGTAIL. 
Moracinba Rall, Bonap. 
Pl. XL, fig. 1. 
Geogr. distr.— Widely extended in Europe, but only common in the 
western countries; Western Asia and Africa; tolerably common in 
Great Britain, arriving in April. 
Food.—Larve, insects, wood-lice, Mollusca, and small fish. 
Nest.—Formed of dried grasses and rootlets, lined with finer 
rootlets, hair, bents, and sometimes with green moss, rabbits’ down, 
or sheep’s wool. 
Position of nest—On the ground, usually under shelter of a tussock 
or clod, and always fairly well concealed amongst herbage. 
Number of eggs.—4-6. 
Time of nidification.—V. 
This species frequents meadows, old brick-fields, and 
arable land. 
A nest of this bird was brought to me on the 16th May, 
1885, by Mr. W. R. Salter (a cousin of my friend Mr. 
Drake) who found it at Kemsley, in Kent, in the bank of a 
pit partly filled with water, amongst rank herbage. The 
nest is large and well formed of coarse grass, moss, and 
root fibre, and neatly lined with wool covered with fine 
fibre and black and white hair ; the eggs are six in number, 
and are of a pale whitish stone-colour without any per- 
ceptible mottling ; they are, in fact, similar in colouring to 
the palest varieties of eggs of the common Partridge. 
This Yellow Wagtail is by no means an uncommon 
species in the neighbourhood of Sheppy; I have seen it 
every year either in the brick-fields of Murston or Kemsley, 
where it doubtless breeds regularly; I have also seen the 
blue-headed Wagtail at Murston once or twice during the 
last fourteen or fifteen years, but there is no doubt that it 
is very rare in Kent, or I should have seen it more fre- 
quently ; for there is no possibility of mistaking one species 
for the other. 
