Yellow Wagtails.

This spring has been a great one for Yellow Wagtails on Hilbre and the north Wirral coast in general where local patchers were reporting double figures most days. I've even had 3 over the house in one week. Most of the ones I've seen on Hilbre have been flyovers with the occasional bird on the ground so to have 'flocks' of up to 7 birds at a time feeding on a big hatch of flies was pretty special.

The race we generally get breeding in the UK is Motacilla flava flavissima and the bright yellow males are truly stunning birds. Populations have been in steep decline, due to changing agricultural practices and loss of habitat (as well as pressures in their wintering grounds in Africa) and it was added to the red list of species of conservation concern in 2009 following a decline of nearly 75%.

There are a large number of different races of Yellow Wagtail and we occasionally get some of these with parties of our Yellow Wagtails during spring migration. Identification of these races can be a minefield as there is a lot of overlap and interbreeding. One of the most striking is Black-headed Wagtail which some have mooted as a future split into a separate species....

However, none of this concerned us on Hilbre. All ours appeared to be flavissima. If you look closely you cansee the flies the birds were feeding on trying to photobomb the pictures.