Pied Wagtail
Motacilla alba yarrellii
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Runs across the supermarket car park in short bursts, tail pumping the whole time.
A slim black-and-white bird with a very long tail that it wags almost continuously. Adults in summer are boldly pied with a black back and bib; winter birds are greyer with a white throat. Pied wagtails are thoroughly at home with people in Dumfries — car parks, flat roofs, riverside paths, farmyards — and the British race is darker-backed than the white wagtails that pass through on migration.
Behaviour
The feeding style is unmistakable: a fast run across open ground, an abrupt stop, a snatch at an insect, then off again, tail pumping throughout. On winter evenings pied wagtails gather into communal roosts, sometimes of several hundred birds, in warm sheltered places — trees in town centres, glasshouses and industrial buildings — because a lit, heated town holds warmth that open countryside does not.
When to see it
Quick facts
- Family
- Wagtails and pipits (Motacillidae)
- Size
- 18 cm · slim, with a very long tail
- UK status
- Green-listed
Photo by Jac. Janssen from BAARLO LB, NL, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons