Amber alert for this yellow beauty
More yellow wagtails are arriving back here after spending the winter on the lush pastures of the Gambia.
They are one of our most attractive birds with their bright yellow breasts and olive-green upper parts and slightly shorter tails than pied wagtails.
Yellow wagtails wag their tails less frequently but instead used them as a rudder as they spring into the air to snap up passing insects.
In other parts of Europe there are many other different forms of wagtails, I once saw five different forms sitting on one fence on the Mediterranean migration hotspot of Lesbos. It seems inevitable that some of these forms will eventually evolve into totally different species.
The British form, flavissima, breeds in this country and a few pairs along the Continental North Sea coastline.
Of the other forms the most regularly seen here is the blue-headed which has a smart cornflower blue cap and bright white eyestripe. Some move through this country on passage every spring and a few stay to breed, often with yellow wagtails.
Then there is a form with a wholly slate-grey head found in Norway and Sweden, one of these was seen last week at the Fairburn Ings reserve near Castleford, a third record for the reserve,one with a grey head and white throat from Italy, one from the Balkans with a glossy black crown and other forms found in Russia, Spain, Romania and Siberia.
So it is always worth checking a group of wagtails carefully to see if one of these is among them.
Unfortunately our yellow wagtail form, almost unique to this country, is on the amber list of birds of conservation concern because numbers have slumped by more than 80 per cent over the past 25 years.
There is a lack of the damp pastures and boggy areas where they used to breed.
Yellow wagtail surveys were carried out in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, one of the core breeding areas for yellow wagtails in our region and conservation measures such as the later cutting of meadows introduced to give the wagtails chance to complete their breeding cycle.
These appear to have stemmed and reversed the declines in these areas but thedeclines are continuing elsewhere with yellow wagtails all but absent from Scotland where they were once widespread and now totally missing from the Irish countryside.
Sightings over the week-end include five firecrest , two Jacksnipe white wagtail and cuckoo at Spurn , red throated diver at Hornsea Merealso little gull and whimbrel at Swillington Ings.
tealebill48@yahoo.co.uk
CW 24/4/10
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Weather for Yorkshire
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -5 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: North
Tomorrow
Light sleet
Temperature: 0 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South
