The Blue-headed Wagtail.
(Motacilla flava.)
This very handsome little bird, which is smaller than the White Wagtail, and does not wag its tail so much, inhabits the low Hungarian plain, and the pastureland generally of the open country, especially moist moorlands, and the banks of marshes, where it keeps close to the grazing animals, which are mostly swine and buffaloes. When swine trample down the bank of the ponds the bird approaches, and picks up the water insects and larvæ which have been exposed in the disturbed ground, or if the buffaloes trample the earth on the edge of the marsh the Wagtail is sure to be close on their heels to secure its share of food. It builds its nest in the grasses of the meadow or at the roots of the bushes in the hedge. It usually lays five eggs, which have light flecks on a dingy white ground.
A bird I always looked for eagerly in the days of my youth, on our Staffordshire moorlands was the Yellow Wagtail with its lovely tints. It would come tripping blithely along a certain road on its way from one rough fallow field to another, a most dainty, and I fancied then, even foreign-looking little creature. It has a prettier song than its relatives, the Grey and the Pied Wagtails, and is altogether a daintier looking bird. Nor is it so common, being very local in its distribution. Leaving us in September, little parties of the Yellow Wagtails are formed then, and some districts only make their acquaintance with these birds when on their migratory flight. Lately I heard of a company of about seventy Wagtails resting for the night in Kew Gardens grounds, where they had not been noted before. They frequent the meadows beside the Brent by Perivale, Ealing, where small, thin-shelled molluscs by the stream, and insects stirred into activity by the heavy feet of the grazing cattle, furnish them with food. I watched one day a pretty sight,—a nimble Wagtail in close attendance on an old sheep. The way it darted nimbly about this animal’s face, picking off the tiny flies as the creature fed was wonderful. Sometimes you may chance to see one picking the torturing little insects out of an old horse’s ears as it lies resting on the sward.
The yellow species is called Motacilla raii, but the Abbé Vincelot, who wrote half a century ago, on the birds of Maine-et-Loire, treating specially of their names as descriptive of their manners, call it Motacilla boarula, and he said he thought the latter designation came from Boaria, an old name for Bavaria, used after the Boïens, driven by the Marcomans from Bohemia, settled there. This name Boïens seems to have been given to the tribes who reared and tended cattle. There were Boïens of Gaul, of Italy, and of Germany. In Poitou an ox is still called boe and the grazier boier. By the ancient Romans the beef market was called the forum boarium. And so the name of boarule given to the Yellow Wagtail may be supposed to indicate this habit of following up the cattle in quest of his insect food. Bergeronette, the common French name of this charming and useful species, is equally descriptive of the bird as an ally of the shepherd.
The Pied Wagtail, Motacilla lugubris, is our common and well distributed species. The Grey Wagtail, M. Melanópe, a beautiful bird with its longer tail and yellow tints, frequents our hilly districts and mountain streams; but, the Blue-headed species is only an irregular visitor to our Islands, on migration. The food and habits of this family are alike, and they are all most useful to the grazier and farmers generally.
A Morning Bath