The First Ladybird Book of British Birds – #14 The Pied Wagtail
It’s Day 14 of turning the pages in this 1950s Ladybird book of British Birds.
“…it does like to be fairly near water.”
It certainly does. Here’s one I photographed last week which had just been for a paddle:
When life seems unremittingly awful, when your day is full of roadworks, roadkill, service stations and polluted air, there’s always some sign of life to make your day better. In my case it was a Pied Wagtail feeding a fledgeling. Here’s my blog about the uplifting experience:
Almost unremittingly awful
It’s forty years since I first spotted a Pied Wagtail and drew it in my childhood nature notebooks. Here’s the entry from 3 November 1976:
The book says:
“Lots of people call this bird the Water Wagtail.”
I certainly did. “Called Willie Water Wagtail, Dishwasher,” is what my poor handwriting in blue biro says.
Here’s one living on crumbs in Italy:
Living on crumbs
According to the State of the UK’s Birds Pied Wagtails have increased by 39% from 1970 to 2015. It’s a small success in a very patchy picture of overall decline. In Devon hundreds of them come to roost in a handful of trees in some town centres where there’s a much warmer micro-climate. That sounds like it should be my next photo project. It’s not exactly following the plough or being near cows though, is it?
More Pied Wagtails
A pied landscape Out past the beach and the relative calm of the Bay of Swartmill is a shattered and splintered landscape of… read more
Pied I love the texture of granite on the roughly-hewn stone walls of Dartmoor. This Pied Wagtail was being ruffled by… read more
Little mover The scientific name for the Pied Wagtail is Motacilla alba. Motacilla means 'Little mover' and alba means white. This one… read more
Ballerina The White Wagtail is the name of the European version of our Pied Wagtail. They're not called Wagtails in Italy,… read more
Pied Wagtail Pied Wagtails are one of my favourite birds to just sit and watch. Their hypnotic tail-wagging action is a mysterious… read more
Pied piping Wagtails There's a noisy Pied Wagtail family on the River Lemon in South Devon. I'm enjoying their fluttering, wagging, calling and… read more
Dartmoor birds A lockdown lifetime ago we went to Dartmoor for a walk. I say 'a walk', but it was more an… read more
White Wagtails White Wagtails are fascinating birds. In the UK we call our darker sub-species the Pied Wagtail. Even though it's a… read more