It is not surprising to find varieties amongst birds so numerous. Some are quite white, others variegated, or speckled with white.
Habitation.—When wild it is found equally near houses, in the fields and mountains, and in every place where insects and worms are in plenty. It is in Germany a bird of passage, which assembles in autumn on the tiles, like the swallow, to prepare for its departure in the first fortnight of October[96]. It returns towards the end of February or beginning of March, though the weather be not mild; it may come thus early without danger, as it does not fear to approach houses, on the walls of which it finds flies that the spring sun has drawn from their retreat; and in the streams it also finds abundance of aquatic insects.
In the house it may be kept in a cage, or allowed to range; but in either case it is necessary to scatter plenty of sand about, as it is a very dirty little bird.
Food.—When wild, it feeds on gnats, water-spiders, aquatic insects, flies, and insects that fasten on cattle, round which it often roams. It also follows the ploughman to feed on the insects turned up by the plough.
In the house nothing tames it so soon as ants’ eggs, meal-worms, flies, and other insects. By degrees it acquires a taste for other food. In the cage it must be fed in the same manner as the nightingale.
Breeding.—This species breeds two or three times in the course of the season. Its nest, placed in a hole, in a crevice between stones, or even under a tile, is carelessly formed of moss, small roots, hay, or something of the kind, and lined with hair and wool. It lays five or six eggs, of a bluish white, spotted with black. The young ones brought up from the nest become so tame, that they will go and return like a pigeon, build in the room, and seek for food for their little ones in the fields.
Diseases.—Though very subject to diarrhœa, this and the two following species may be preserved in a room five or six years.
GREY WAGTAIL.