Douglas Dewar

“What art thou made of?—air or light or dew?

—I have no time to tell you if I knew.

My tail—ask that—perhaps may solve the matter;

I’ve missed three flies already by this chatter.”

I quite agree with Mr. Warde Fowler that wagtails are everything that birds should be. They are just the right size; their shape and form are perfect; they dress most tastefully; they display that sprightliness that one looks for in birds; their movements are elegant and engaging; their undulating flight is blithe and gay; their song is sweet and cheery; they are friendly, and sociable, fond of men and animals, “not too shy, not too bold.” They are, in short, ideal birds.

I know of nothing more enjoyable than to sit watching a wagtail feeding at the water’s edge.

“She runs along the shore so quickly,” writes a long-forgotten author, “that the eye is hardly able to follow her steps, and yet, with a flying glance, she examines every crevice, every stalk that conceals her reposing or creeping prey. Now she steps upon a smoothly washed stone; she bathes and drinks—and how becomingly, and with what an air! The very nicest soubrette could not raise her dress more coquettishly, the best-taught dancer not move with more graceful pas than the pretty bather as she lifts her train and dainty feet. Suddenly she throws herself, with a jump and a bound, into the air, to catch the circling gnat; and now should be seen the beating of wings, the darting hither and thither, the balancing and the shakes and the allegretto that her tail keeps time to. Nothing can surpass it in lightness. In fine, of all the little feathered people, none, except the swallow, is more graceful, fuller of movement, more adroit or insinuating, than the wagtail.”

Wagtails are essentially birds of the temperate zone. They remind us of a fact that we who dwell in the tropics are apt to forget, namely, that there are some beautiful birds found outside the torrid zone.

Fourteen species of wagtail occur in India, but the majority of them leave us to breed. They bring up their families in cool Kashmir, on the chilly, wind-swept heights of Thibet, or even in glacial Siberia, and visit India only in the winter when their native land becomes too frigid even for them.

Many of the migratory wagtails do not show themselves in the southern portion of the peninsula, being rightly of opinion that the climate of Upper India is not far from perfect during the winter months.

There is, however, one species—the most lovable of them all—the pied-wagtail (Motacilla maderaspatensis)—which has discovered that it is possible to live in the plains of India throughout the year; and, having made this discovery, it has decided that the troubles and trials of the hot weather are lesser evils than the inconveniences and perils of the long migratory journey. The head of this species is black, relieved by a white streak running through the eye; the wings and tail are mostly black, and a bib—or is “front” a more correct word?—of similar hue is usually worn. The under parts of the bird are white.

The pied-wagtail is common all over India. It is particularly abundant in the city of Madras, where it is to be seen everywhere—on the house-top, in the courtyard, in shady garden, in open field, and on the river bank in company with the soldiers who solemnly fish in the waters round about the fort.

When in Madras I used to see almost daily one of these birds perched on the telegraph wire that runs across the Cooum parallel with the Mount Road bridge. The bird seemed to spend most of the day in pouring forth its sweet song. When sitting on the wire its tail used to hang down in a most unwagtail-like manner, so that the bird looked rather like a pipit. Pied-wagtails sometimes appropriate suitable parts of the bungalow for nesting sites; when this happens the human occupant has plenty of opportunity of studying their ways.

The remaining thirteen species of wagtails are merely winter visitors to the plains of India. Two or three of these are to be seen feeding, during the cold weather, on every grass-covered field, and at the edge of every jhil. In the latter place wagtails are nothing short of a nuisance to the man who is out after snipe, for they have the habit of rising along with the snipe, and the white outer-tail feathers invariably catch the eye. Many a snipe owes its life to the wagtail.

The four commonest of the migratory wagtails are, I think, the white (Motacilla alba), the masked (M. impersonata), the grey (M. melanope), and the grey-headed wagtail (M. borealis). The two latter are characterised by much bright yellow in the lower plumage, which the first two lack; but I am not going to attempt to achieve the impossible by trying to describe the various species of wagtail. Owing to the fact that these birds, like ladies of fashion, are continually changing their gowns, it is very difficult to state the species to which an individual belongs without examining that individual feather by feather. You may see a dozen wagtails of the same species catching insects on your lawn, each of which differs markedly from all his companions. Most of us are satisfied with the knowledge that a given bird is a wagtail, and are able to enjoy the poetry and grace of its motion without troubling our heads about its scientific name.