PIED WAGTAIL. 
MOTACILLA YARRELLI. 
The Pied Wagtail is well known in most parts of the British Islands, more plentiful perhaps in the south but 
certainly a summer visitor, if not a resident, in the north. I occasionally remarked several pairs along the 
banks of the Ness as early in the year as the beginning of April ; a few of these probably pass the winter in the 
district. They may be met with on the stony shores of the river where it flows through the town of Inverness 
as well as along the various burns and streams in the neighbourhood. Scattered pairs are also to be observed 
during the winter on the east coast of Ross-shire. 
1 hough it is a well-known fact that our native birds receive large additions to their numbers early in 
the spring, I have been unable to learn from personal observation at what date our summer visitors take 
their departure for the continent. The first and by far the largest arrivals may be looked for on the south 
coast soon after the beginning of March. Straggling parties continue to cross during the whole of the month ; 
and occasionally a few make their appearance as late as April. On still mornings they may be observed 
landing by hundreds. They seldom show the slightest signs of fatigue or exhaustion when the passage of 
the Channel is accomplished. After alighting for a time at some brackish pool in the vicinity of the shore or 
on newly ploughed land, they invariably continue their journey direct to the quarters they intend to take up 
for the summer. Although hundreds may have been observed within a mile or two of the coast during the 
early morning, it is seldom that more than a pair or two will be met with after two o’clock in the day, the 
whole of the birds of passage having made their way inland. Should the weather set in cold and stormy, few, 
if any, will make their appearance; but with a change of temperature their accustomed haunts will again be 
alive with fresh arrivals. 
During the summer months these Wagtails may be found scattered over the country, a pair or two here 
and there wherever suitable localities are procurable. While engaged in their nesting-operations they seldom 
stray far from the neighbourhood of the farm-buildings, quarries, chalk-pits, or other situations that offer them 
a home. A low-lying patch of marsh-land, the banks of a horse-pond, a gutter, or a mountain-stream are 
usually the rendezvous where the largest meetings may be noticed; and to such spots the young make their 
way on leaving the nest. As autumn draws on they gather in flocks and betake themselves to the river-side, 
the salt-water mudbanks, or flooded meadows, collecting towards evening iu large parties often at a 
considerable distance from their usual haunts. 
These birds may commonly be seen roosting in company with other species. I repeatedly disturbed 
a party that had taken up their quarters for the night with a number of Swallows in a reed-bed in the 
east of Norfolk during the months of July and August 1881. The Wagtails appeared, while I observed 
them, either running on the water-plants or perched on the dead and floating roots of the reeds. I also 
remarked an assemblage of from twenty to thirty resorting with lleed-Buntings to a patch of rushes in the 
marshes between Shoreham and Becding, during the first week in March 1879. By G p.m. large numbers of 
