PIED WAGTAIL. 
67 
upon error. If this be not so, then I will take leave to doubt its claim as a 
species, and this latter conviction of mine has been strengthened very much of 
late, not only by the very large numbers of M. lugubris (the following species) 
which I have collected and examined, but from the fact that, in the British Museum, 
there is a nest with young labelled “ Pied Wagtail. A pair of birds with their 
nest and 5 young. The male, however, is not a Pied Wagtail, but is the European 
species known as the ‘ White Wagtail’ (M. alba), affording an interesting example 
of the interbreeding of two representative forms. Xorfolk. (June). Presented by 
Lord Walsingham.” To those who recognize what importance is to be attached to 
the interbreeding of two closely-allied forms, comment is hardly necessary, but 
the conviction irresistibly presents itself that if M. alba is not merely a climatic 
form, it may be a certain stage of plumage, arising from condition or development, 
of the Pied Wagtail. It is quite certain that every intermediate stage of 
plumage between the two so-called species can be found; and if this considera- 
tion, and the proved fact of the male in the S. Kensington group being recorded 
as that of M. alba, is not on all fours with the interbreeding of the Carrion and 
Hooded Crows, the rule is evidently so poor as not to work both ways. 
PIED WAGTAIL. Motacilla lugubris (Temminck). 
“ Dish-washer,” “ Peggy Wash-dish,” “ Water- Wagtail.” 
Resident and common. — Mr. G. Lillingston Johnson, of L’lverscroft, sent 
me, in June, 1888, the following interesting note : — “ For the last four years 
I have remarked, about 20th IMarch, a flight of Wagtails on my lawn ; they 
begin to come by twos and threes, and shew on the lawn most punctually at 
6.30 every evening, till they accumulate to the number of thirty. They appear 
to be holding a matrimonial parliament. After a few days they begin to lessen 
in numbers, and, to my knowledge, only two pairs remain here to nest.” 
Harley, who appears to have made a study, for many years, of this bird, 
observed that it seems to pair about the middle of March in open seasons, and, 
by the first week in the following month, is engaged in nidification. He had 
found it nesting in the head of the pollard-willow and ash ; on a stump of 
osier, and occasionally on the ground below; also in piles of wood, stacks of 
coal, and large heaps of slate and stones. That they do select a home amongst 
the “ black diamonds ” was shewn by the fact that a pair of these birds nested, 
in 1885, in a stack of coal on Mr. Gulson’s wharf, IMill Lane, Leicester, and 
made determined attacks on the family Cat, which was sometimes anxious to 
inspect the brood. Mr. Davenport states that a pair nested, three years con- 
secutively, in ivy on some stalls at Skeffington. The eggs were taken on the 
third occasion, and the birds never repaired to the same spot again. A pair 
built in the exercise court of the Borough Asylum in 1886 (see article upon 
Cuckoo, p. 104). 
In Rutland. — Resident and common. — !Mr. Horn noted them in con- 
