Pied or White Wagtail? (1 Viewer)

Lancey · Apr 10, 2005

Dear all,
I face this dilemma several times a year and 2005 is no exception - is this wagtail Pied or White? Initially I considered it a female White Wagtail because of the slightly darker than pale grey upperparts which have a slight contrast with the nape and crown. Then I started thinking of female Pied Wagtail and found myself seeing reasons why it could be either.

Can anyone offer any explanation why it should be Pied instead of White or vice versa? I'd be pleased to hear from you.

Thanks,
Lancey

dbradnum · Apr 10, 2005

I reckon you were spot on with female White Wag here. The flanks are almost completely clean; the nape is grey, not black; the mantle is very "clean" pale grey.

My only doubt is that the black on the rump extends quite a long way up the back?

I'd call this as a White, but would be interested to hear other (more experienced) views...

David

dan pointon · Apr 10, 2005

Well i'm not more experienced but i would call White Wag here too.

Dan

Lancey · Apr 10, 2005

White Wagtail?

David,
You have hit the nail on the head when you mention the rump colour - that was a concern of mine too. I also thought the bib being shaped somewhat like a holly leaf and not more tidy looking was a little odd. I presumed it could be a 1st summer female?

Has anyone any other observations/ comments on this bird which could help?

Thanks,
Lancey

Edward woodwood · Apr 10, 2005

looks like a female yarrelli (Pied) to me

flanks are dusky, lower back dark etc and overall back colour looks dark

Tim

Lucky Birder · Apr 11, 2005

Tim Allwood said:
looks like a female yarrelli (Pied) to me

flanks are dusky, lower back dark etc and overall back colour looks dark

Tim

Yes, I would go with Pied. The flanks should be cleaner and the mantle a considerably lighter grey. Having said that, there are so many intergrades between alba and yarelli, some birds are a bit ambiguous.

Jane Turner · Apr 11, 2005

I'm in the yarelli camp. With a runp like that I'd be wanting to see really white flanks and a shrp demarkation between mantle and nape

Lancey · Apr 11, 2005

Pied Wagtail

Dear all,
Having decided - at least I think we have -upon Pied as opposed to White, given the fact that mixed pairings between Pied and White have been recorded, does anyone have any details of what a hybrid Pied x White would look like? They must occur surely? I hadn't thought about that where this bird is concerned, but I would imagine they are out there somewhere - although probably not actually identified as such.

I didn't find this bird straightforward - I hope posting it has been useful for other Bird Forum members too.

Thanks,
Lancey

dbradnum · Apr 11, 2005

dbradnum said:
The flanks are almost completely clean;

Arrrggghhh! Did I really say that? Must remember not to post on non-trivial ID after a bottle of wine... and to look a bit harder when I do!

Cheers to Tim, Jane and LB - good points, well made. Educational thread...

sphinx79 · Apr 13, 2005

Just spotted this and thought I'd throw a spanner in the works. I know alba is a fairly scarce migrant in the UK but can't for the life of me see why this isn't one. I happily bow to Tim and Jane's experience of yarrelli but feel that a couple of the features mentioned as diagnostic of yarrelli don't actually rule out alba.

On my screen the mantle looks mid-greyish - and uniformly so (a fair pointer for alba versus yarrelli, which I'd expect to be one to two shades darker and perhaps usually to show some dark smudging admixed among the paler feathers).

The duskiness on the flanks isn't at odds with a first-summer alba - even older birds often show quite prominent shadowing on the flanks. I was out this afternoon looking at a flock of half a dozen albas and at least a couple had quite sullied flanks. Personally, I'd expect yarrellii to be duskier on the flanks - and for the flanks themselves to be more extensively dark - than this bird and darker on the mantle. Maybe a pale first-summer yarrelli could look like this, but here in Sweden I wouldn't have thought twice about labelling this bird an alba.

Plenty of albas, often females, show darker uppertail coverts and lower rumps in contrast to lighter mantle and back, just like this bird. And the absence of a clear demarcation between nape and mantle is surely okay for an alba first-summer. Indeed I saw a similarly patterned bird among my alba flock today.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it definitely IS an alba - though I feel it may be. But just to query whether we can rule alba out, which I'm not sure we can.

Best regards,

Greg

fatboyfat · Apr 13, 2005

This is undoubtedly a Pied Wagtail. The flanks are very grey, ruling out alba immediately. The back looks too dark and it just looks too 'dirty' to be an alba. Having said that, could this just be an effect of the photos? I don't think so, but...

sphinx79 · Apr 14, 2005

fatboyfat said:
This is undoubtedly a Pied Wagtail. The flanks are very grey, ruling out alba immediately.

Bald assertions don't help much when assigning yarrelli/alba wagtails to subspecies. Intermediate individuals can be very tricky and may have to be left unidentified. It's MUCH more complicated than some field guides would suggest! To assert that greyness on the flanks automatically rules out alba is simply wrong. I see alba wagtails virtually every day in Sweden and can vouch for the fact that some otherwise typical birds can be surprisingly dusky on the flanks - though never so saturatedly dark as yarrelli. I enclose a photo I took yesterday of a darkish alba with prominent flank shadowing.

Contrary to what the field guides might lead us to believe, alba can show dark grey uppertail coverts and lower rump, though never black as in yarrelli and not extending as far up the rump as yarrelli. Nor do first-summer females always show a clear demarcation between nape and mantle. If only things were that simple...

Regards

Greg

Lucky Birder · Apr 14, 2005

Yes, I've seen the darker flanked birds on alba in Sweden on occasion, but the mantle colour on the bird in above photo is to my eye nearer yarelli.

James Lowther · Apr 14, 2005

This whole question illustrates to me the difference perspective makes to difficult ID problems. We brits will tend to write off difficult/intermediate birds as definite yarrelli 'cause we're looking for the ID pointers that confirm alba, continentals will probably take the opposite view and write them off as alba, 'cause they're looking (I would imagine) to confirm yarelli.

HH75 · Apr 14, 2005

Hi Greg,
Very interesting comments re alba with dusky flanks! I have heard an ex-pat British birder living here comment on this feature on birds that we here would call as alba without hesitation (these birds arrive en masse in September and feed on invertebrates in washed-up seaweed, and look quite different to any age of the local yarrelli, which are usually present in smaller numbers with them for comparison): perhaps some populations of alba show more of a tendency towards this feature than others (Icelandic birds, say, which could be expected to predominate on passage in Ireland)? Had an adult male this spring (the taxon is scarcer here in spring than in autumn) with sharp demarcation between black nape and pale grey mantle, grey rump etc...but it still had greyish flanks!
Harry

Ghostly Vision · Apr 14, 2005

Harry Hussey said:
Hi Greg,
Very interesting comments re alba with dusky flanks! I have heard an ex-pat British birder living here comment on this feature on birds that we here would call as alba without hesitation (these birds arrive en masse in September and feed on invertebrates in washed-up seaweed, and look quite different to any age of the local yarrelli, which are usually present in smaller numbers with them for comparison): perhaps some populations of alba show more of a tendency towards this feature than others (Icelandic birds, say, which could be expected to predominate on passage in Ireland)? Had an adult male this spring (the taxon is scarcer here in spring than in autumn) with sharp demarcation between black nape and pale grey mantle, grey rump etc...but it still had greyish flanks!
Harry

Harry,

I completely concur with you on the autumn birds. They do exactly the same in Cornwall, though I have seen them in pasture as well, but they do seem primarily coastal.

I think the bird in the original photo's struck me as alba when I looked at it first glance. The mantle has that creamy colour to it.

GV

Lancey · Apr 16, 2005

Pied/White Wagtail

Dear all,
It has been a while since I visited this thread which I thought had been finished within five posts. Obviously not! Thanks to Greg's timely comments from his own experiences of 'alba' the identification of this bird is once more open to debate.

From a personal perspective, what I find so frustrating is that Pied Wagtails are such a familiar sight and yet I can't be sure if it is a certain Pied or White Wagtail. I watched it in the field for five minutes with the Collins field guide in my hand and wasn't sure. I played back the video on my TV with other identification guides but couldn't be sure. Now I've posted it on Bird Forum and I'm pleased to see that opinions expressed here are mixed too.

Unfortunately, I suspect that until White Wagtail is officially split from Pied Wagtail there won't be the publication of relevant information required to deal with tricky birds like this one.

Thanks for your comments,

Lancey

Edward woodwood · Apr 16, 2005

the lower back and rump are decidedly dark if not black

the mantle is much too dark surely for an alba?

Tim

Lancey · Apr 16, 2005

Pied Wagtail

Tim,
As they say on Who Wants To Be a Millionare (allegedly) ' if you know the answer then the question is easy'.

Lancey

Lucky Birder · Apr 16, 2005

I'm still in the yarelli camp. The darkest mantled alba I've seen were in Israel, but they weren't as dark as this.

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