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Motacilla cinerea
This slim wagtail has a narrow white supercilium and a broken eye ring. The upperparts are grey and the yellow vent contrasting with whitish underparts makes it distinctive. The breeding male has a black throat that is edged by whitish moustachial stripes.
The species is widely distributed, with several populations breeding in Europe and Asia and migrating to tropical regions in Asia and Africa.They forage singly or in pairs on meadows or on shallow water marshes. They also use rocks in water and will often perch on trees.
The female and babies were indeed in the sides of a river.
6 Comments
Thanks Karen! I have to come back another day with more light to see if I can have a better shot of the adults :-)
Lovely series Marta!
Hi Marta, thanks for doing the update, but you missed the reference. I have lots of photographs of the different sub-species of Yellow Wagtails which have been migrating through here over the last couple of months but I have a large backlog waiting to upload when I can get a better connection. I might put some on the PN facebook page later as it is more tolerant of slow speeds.
Yes, indeed. I corrected it. The babies were all the time moving very close to the river waters and the mom coming around every little while to feed them. It was a very pretty scene :-)
Hi Marta, this looks more like a Grey Wagtail to me, the adult yellow does not have a whitish patch in the centre of the breast and has a greenish yellow mantle.
Interesting!