376 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



time, paying especial attention to the female alba, which we 

 observed in every position, and frequently close to us, with strong 

 glasses, so that we could see it perfectly. It was clearly adult, 

 from the extent and purity of the black on chin, throat, and 

 breast. This grey-crowned plumage in M. alba, female, can 

 hardly be universal, or it would surely have been noticed by some 

 of the many ornithologists who have observed the White Wagtail 

 on the Continent. If I remember right, there is a grey-crowned 

 bird in the Natural History Museum, but I cannot be sure. 

 Yarrell says that, in the female, "the black on the occiput 

 occupies less space," which is undoubtedly true, but hardly 

 conveys the impression of a bird with scarcely any black at all on 

 the upper surface of its head. 



Since writing the above, I have seen, among a fine series of 

 White Wagtails in a private collection, two females in which the 

 black on the top of the head was reduced to a band across the 

 hinder part of the crown. A short time previously I had been 

 looking at the Norfolk mixed pair presented to the Natural 

 History Museum by Lord Walsingham, the male of which is a 

 White and the female a Pied Wagtail, and it was interesting to 

 find a case in which the sexes were reversed. 



On the 14th March, 1885, I watched a pair of Wagtails in a 

 field of young wheat at Great Bourton, the female of which was 

 quite a pale grey on the back, and I feel sure now that it was a 

 White Wagtail ; but at the time I did not know that interbreeding 

 had ever been proved to have taken place, and thought I might 

 have been mistaken. I saw an undoubted White Wagtail at 

 Bourton on the 17th May, 1884, and on the 27th September, 1885, 

 two more at Clattercote Reservoir. Mr. A. H. Macpherson also 

 saw one on the Isis bank above Oxford on the 4th May, 1886 ; but 

 up to this year these were the only certain Oxfordshire occurrences 

 of which I was aware ; although during a very high wind on the 

 25th April, 1885, I saw among numbers of other newly-arrived 

 summer migrants, — e. g., Wheatears, Ray's Wagtails, Redstarts, 

 Sand Martins, &c, — in a sheltered meadow at Bloxham Grove, 

 a bird which I believe was of this species. 



