Yesterday was a good one birdwise…….. I say to my self often,  “one thing is for certain, you wont see anything sat in in your armchair”.  So with this mantra in mind I went off for a look around.  Its hard for me though, I always like to avoid popular areas and other birders and photographers.  I get no pleasure whatsoever from jostling with other, albiet likeminded people, nothing personal, I just prefer it on my own. The pleasure for me is doing things on my own and finding my own birds and wildlife. There is an area near to home where I always see lots of Wagtails and as yellow Wagtails are on the move at this time of year, I thought it would be a good place to look for them.  I sat in the car overlooking the field and livestock.  At first it seemed quiet but once I had parked up, at least 10 Pied and White Wagtails were feeding around the cow dung and sillage feed put down for the cattle.  They came and went and I took hundreds of photos of the wagtails clse to me.  Then suddenly, there it was, an instantly noticeable and recogniseable Yellow Wagtail – Motacilla flavia. Unfortunately it stayed in the field probable too far away for a good photo but I did manage to record the bird to add to  my Devon Bird Gallery (now up to 163 species). 

The bird at the top, and this one here below, is probable a White Wagtail, it seems to fit all the criteria but at this time of the year it’s quite hard to separate White Wags from Pied.
This bird (below) could quite easily be a White Wagtail but it is younger and still in moult so the jury is out as they say.

The bird below is obviously very young, you can even see the fleshy gapes at the edge of the beak. I would say that this is a Pied Wagtail based on the fact that it was probably hatched and reared sometime nearby, I think it is too young to have started any kind of migration.