Junior

Wild Wednesday: Juvenile Pied Wagtail

With many thanks to Cailleach for the Wild Wednesday challenge.

Throughout the Winter months we were visited by a pair of pied wagtails who were always very pleased to hoover up any of the seed that the other birds spilled from the feeders.   

The RSPB web site describes them as "a delightful small, long-tailed and rather sprightly black and white bird. When not standing and frantically wagging its tail up and down it can be seen dashing about over lawns or car parks in search of food. It frequently calls when in its undulating flight and often gathers at dusk to form large roosts in city centres."

With the arrival of the Spring they disappeared, to be replaced by other birds. That was no bad thing as the wagtails are quite fast moving and certainly tend to cause some of the other birds, such as the chaffinches and dunnocks, to stay out of the way.

This evening when I arrived home there were a pair of the birds pictured in this shot in the garden.  I didn't recognise them.  So I raced off to get the camera (swap for the large telephoto, check there memory card, check the settings) and raced back to see if I could get a photo from which I might then stand a chance of being able to identify them.  Fortunately they were in no hurry to move on despite the miserable drizzle and I took loads of shots of which this is probably the best.  

It turns out that they are juvenile pied wagtails, and sure enough Mum and Dad came to collect them after a while and they all flew off together.  Hopefully they will be back.

The good news is that I didn't think about my back once during this process, and the 200 - 500 is not a light piece of kit, so I must be getting better :-)  Interesting that although the ISO is 4000, there is very little unacceptable noise in the shot.

Finally, in a fit of silliness last night, I checked and established that if I really wanted to then I could claim Irish citizenship through my maternal grandmother, as she was born in Ireland.  Interestingly, I cannot claim French citizenship through my paternal grandmother, though she was born in France.  That tells you something about the two countries, although I'm not entirely sure what :-)