White Wagtail (Motacilla alba alba) from a snowy day a few years ago. 

Dear Readers, as I walked up the Stairs of Doom at East Finchley Station this morning, I noticed a small bird looping around on the platform. “Wagtail”, I thought, and I instantly felt cheered up. There’s something about the way that this bird runs around with its tail keeping time like a metronome that is so endearing, and the looping flight seems to paint a delicate line in the sky. Strangely enough, I only seem to see pied wagtails around here in the winter, when they usually stay for a few months and then disappear – the one in the photo above hung around outside Kentucky Fried Chicken for weeks.

Which makes me wonder if these winter birds are not, in fact, Pied Wagtails (Motacilla alba yarrellii), which are described as ‘sedentary’, but might instead be White Wagtails (Motacilla alba alba) which are passage migrants from mainland Europe. And how would I know?

Well, apparently adult male White Wagtails have a grey back (like the bird in the photo), while adult male Pied Wagtails have a black back. However, it’s all a lot trickier with juveniles, females, or when the birds are in their autumn plumage, which is a lot less ‘sharp’ than their spring plumage.

Photo from https://www.assyntwildlife.org.uk/2022/04/black-and-white-wagtails/

The birds are also supposed to be distinguishable by their calls, although wagtails are not, in my experience, particularly chatty birds. Still, here goes:

This is a White Wagtail (Motacilla alba alba)….

…and this is a Pied Wagtail ( Motacilla alba yarrellii)

You’re welcome.

Whichever subspecies it is that you see, however, I always find this bird a real treat, a creature whose busy-ness and elegance cheers me up on the dullest of days. As far back as the nineteenth century, William Yarrell would write that the wagtail

“is deservedly admired for the elegance of its form, as well as for the activity and the airy lightness exhibited in all its actions. It is ever in motion, running….in pursuit of its insect food, moving from place to place by short undulating flights….alighting again on the ground with a sylph-like buoyancy”.

A lovely description, and one that hasn’t been bettered.

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