The Grey Wagtail
The Grey Wagtail’s scientific name is Motacilla cinerea, Motacilla originates from the Latin word mota, meaning ‘move’ or ‘shake’, which is the root for words such as ‘motive’ and ‘mobile’, and cinerea comes from the Latin for ‘ashes’ or ‘grey’, being the root for ‘cinders’ and ‘incinerated’.
Unlike a lot of scientific names which really cause you to scratch your head when trying to figure them out, this one is fairly straightforward and descriptive, as are the scientific names for our other two wagtails; Motacilla alba, for the ‘white’ Wagtail, more commonly known as the Pied Wagtail, and Motacilla flava, for the ‘Yellow’ Wagtail.
Pied Wagtail
The Pied Wagtail is black, white, and grey, it is the common ‘willie wagtail’ seemingly found everywhere in the British isles in places as diverse as city centre squares, the roofs of industrial units, dodging traffic on motorways to quieter places such as farmyards and fields in the deepest countryside.
The Grey wagtail is nothing like as common as the Pied, It is a slimmer bird, with an even longer tail that, like all wagtails, it continuously wags up and down, hence their genus’s collective common name, however, despite the common name of this species giving the impression that is dull in appearance it is anything but, being more yellow in colour rather than grey, with a brilliant, primrose yellow breast and under tail feathers, which contrast sharply with its upper parts which I would say are more blue than grey. Like other Wagtails the Grey has pleasant, twittering song song evolved to be heard over the rush of the water, and they chirrup constantly when flying in order to find out if there’s any other Wagtails about.
Yellow Wagtail
Both the male and female are similarly striking with the male having a black throat with white stripes both above and below the eye and the female the same but with a paler throat. You feel it should really be called the Yellow wagtail instead, but, unfortunately, this name has been taken by another, rarer, species that has even [more yellow to it](https://www.reddit.com/r/FoBImages/comments/q7lv5j/yellow_wag
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