White Wagtails
White Wagtails are fascinating birds. In the UK we call our darker sub-species the Pied Wagtail.
Even though it’s a common bird and it’s officially classified as of ‘least concern’ it still faces threats. Amazingly, two of those are being kept as pets and being shot and eaten.
It’s one of the species I wrote about in my childhood nature notebooks:
They are constantly on the move:
It’s also one of the species I see quite often at UK motorway service stations, pecking and wagging in the car parks. Here’s my desperate experience of the UK’s road system and the joy of seeing a Wagtail at the services:
This one is in the Parco della Caffarella in Rome:
That incessant tail-wagging is slightly disturbing. Here it is illustrated in a 1950s Ladybird book:
Watching them is still a pleasure:
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
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… read more