Food.—When wild they prefer aquatic insects, and are continually chasing them among the plants and stones by the water-side.
In the house they should be fed on the same food as the nightingale, to which they may be gradually accustomed, by throwing amongst it meal-worms and ants’ eggs.
Breeding.—Their nests, placed by the water-side, in mill-dikes, or heaps of stones, are formed with rather more art than those of the preceding species. They begin to lay as early as March, five or six white eggs, mottled with flesh-colour. The young ones must be reared on ants’ eggs and the crumb of white bread, soaked in boiled milk.
Mode of Taking.—This is very simple; it is only to plant sticks with limed twigs and meal-worms attached to them, on the banks, or in the middle of a stream which they frequent; you will not have to wait long before some are caught.
Attractive Qualities.—They are as pleasing as the common wagtail; but their plumage is more brilliant, and their voice stronger. Their beautiful clear trilling sound renders their song agreeable, though rather short.
THE YELLOW WAGTAIL.
Motacilla flava, Linnæus; La Bergeronette du printemps, Buffon; Die gelbe Bachstelze, Bechstein.
This might almost be mistaken for the female of the preceding species; but it is smaller, or rather shorter, as its tail is not so long, measuring only two inches and a half. The total length of this bird is six inches and a half; the beak is dusky; the iris nut brown; the shanks ten lines high, and black; the upper part of the body reddish grey, with a decided olive tint, which on the rump becomes a canary green; the head inclines more to grey than green, and above the eyes is a reddish white streak; the under part of the body is of a fine yellow, which becomes citron from age, and is palest at the throat and breast.