WAGTAILS. 
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analogy having been suggested by the habits of the rural laundresses, who, wading 
into the streams, cleanse the clothes on a stone. It is partial to the neighbourhood 
of old buildings and outhouses, and often nests in such situations; and in Switzer¬ 
land it seeks the mountain-chalets and cow-sheds, in search of the insects to be found 
in the neighbourhood of domestic animals. The nest of this wagtail may be either 
among the roots of a tree, or in a bank by the riverside, or occasionally on a shelf 
in some outbuildings. Mr. Seebohm says that, in Siberia, the white wagtail is one 
of the first of the soft-billed birds to arrive on the Arctic Circle in any numbers. 
This wagtail nests two or three times in the season, rearing four or five young 
ones in a brood; the nest being built of dry stems of grass, moss, and fibres, closely 
worked together and neatly lined with wool, hair, and often feathers. The eggs 
are white in ground-colour, spotted and speckled with greyish brown. When the 
young leave the nest, they live for some weeks with their parents, haunting 
garden-lawns and meadow-lands in search of food. The flight of the white wagtail 
is rapid and undulating. The call-note is loud and sibilant, and the song some¬ 
what pleasing, although far from powerful. The white wagtail sometimes migrates 
in large parties, and is fond of roosting in the cover supplied by aquatic reeds. All 
the movements of this bird are elegant and rapid, perhaps even more so than those 
of the closely-allied pied wagtail (M. lugubris), so well-known in the British 
Islands as a summer visitor. White varieties of this wagtail are occasionally 
seen, in which the characteristic pattern of plumage has become almost 
obsolete. The adult male in the breeding-season has the forehead and sides of 
the head pure white, the crown, back of the head, and nape jetty black; the 
back, rump, and upper tail-coverts pure pearl grey; the primaries and wing-coverts 
