10-12-2017 LA FONT EN CARROS - WHITE WAGTAIL (Motacilla alba)

The white wagtail is a slender bird, 16.5 to 19 cm (6.5 to 7.5 in) in length; the East Asian subspecies are slightly longer, measuring up to 21 cm (8.3 in). It has the characteristic long, constantly wagging tail of its genus. Its average weight is 25 g (0.88 oz) and the maximum lifespan in the wild is about 12 years.

Wagtails are strongly patterned birds of beaches, meadows, and streamsides; they usually nest on the ground but roost in trees. The birds are so named because they incessantly wag their long tails up and down. The forest wagtail wags its entire body from side to side.

In Old World, the white wagtail eats mostly insects, including midges, crane flies, and other flies, beetles, mayflies, dragonfly larvae, caterpillars, moths, and many others. Feeds on a variety of aquatic insect larvae as well as adult insects. Also eats some spiders, earthworms, tiny fish, and seeds.

It was thought that the willie wagtail could steal a person's secrets while lingering around camps eavesdropping, so women would be tight-lipped in the presence of the bird.

Indigenous Australians believe the Willie Wagtail to be a gossiper who eavesdropped around the camps. In the Kimberley in Western Australia, legend has it that the birds would tell the spirit of the dead if anyone spoke badly of them.

The White Wagtail is a ubiquitous species occupying a wide variety of open (non-forested) habitats across Eurasia. The species is represented by a complex of nine subspecies that exhibit marked variation in plumage pattern and colouration (grey versus black) across its vast breeding range. Although the well-known White Wagtail complex includes some of the most studied birds of the Western Palearctic (e.g.,Motacilla alba albaandM. a. yarrellii), the two eastern Palearctic forms that occur regularly in North America (Alaska) remain poorly known. The easternmost subspecies, M. a. ocularis , ranges to the western edge of Alaska in the Bering Strait region, where it breeds annually in small numbers, and M. a. lugens (formerly the grey wagtail) is a rare and occasional species that breeds in the western Aleutian Islands.