Overview of the White Wagtail
Distribution range: summer migratory birds in most parts of north-central China, resident birds in south China, wintering in Hainan.
Morphological characteristics: small songbirds, black on the top of the head, black and white all over the body, similar male and female.
Habitat: pond river, mountain grassland, rural arable land.
Living habits: Nesting in stone crevices, caves, roofs, mounds, grasses, etc., according to local conditions, different shapes, feeding on insects, etc.
Protection level: listed in the World Red List: no danger (common); listed in China's three lists.
Like many bird lovers, I have often photographed white wagtails in the wild and even in city parks, often a pair of white wagtails.
In fact, the white wagtail also has a nickname called "Zhang Fei Bird", for three reasons, one is because the white wagtail is black and white, which is very similar to Zhang Fei's opera face (pictured), and the second is that the white wagtail's twittering call is very similar to zhang Fei's "chirping"!
The correct lyrics in Rap Face are "The Yellow-Faced Dianwei The White-Faced Cao Cao The Black-Faced Zhang Fei Is Called Chirping..."
The third is Lu Xun's "From the Hundred Grass Garden to the Sanwei Bookhouse", which describes the bird hunting in the Baicao Garden in winter, and writes: "But the most people who get are sparrows, and there are also white-cheeked [Zhang Fei birds], who are very irritable in nature and cannot be raised overnight."
Liu Yuechi comic "Bird Catcher"
This shows that the temperament of the partridge is very similar to Zhang Fei, so it is difficult to feed the white wagtail without raising it in the folk.
Today, I'm going to tell the story of the first time I photographed the brooding of the white wagtail.
Sunday, June 19, 2016, sunny. This day should be the day to go to the bird base village to photograph the tabby ground plover.
Arriving in the village at the scheduled time, a friend told me that his neighbor said that there was a nest of birds in the brick stacks of his yard, possibly the Northern Red-tailed Plover, and asked me to go and see!
I immediately followed my friend to the neighbor's sister's house and saw that in the yard, there was a stack of cement hollow bricks piled outside the window sill, ready to build the warehouse floor, and the brick stack was higher than the window sill. At the top of the brick stack is a scattered row of bricks, of which there is a gap between the two bricks, and the bird's nest is inside. (At that time, I did not take a picture of the brick stack, find a net map to make a look, and the yellow circle is the entrance to the bird's nest)
The neighbor sister saw us coming in and said, the big bird just flew away, you can go over and look, remove the bricks to see. So, according to what the eldest sister said, I gently moved the brick a little, and I saw that one of the hollow bricks had a nest of birds in the hollow, a total of six young birds, only grew some gray and white fluff, and it seemed that the shell was only three or four days. The young birds are too small to be seen from the outside.
The eldest sister also said that just because of this nest of birds, her family's warehouse has been postponed to work, and when the nest of birds grows up and flies away, she will work again. At that time, the respect for the eldest sister was born! In fact, the villagers in this village have a high sense of love for birds, and give the villagers praise!!
Therefore, I decided to take a picture of the nest first and determine the type of parent bird. (The previous analysis was the Northern Red-tailed Plover, so I didn't want to shoot it, because I heard that it seemed to be a white bird, so I wasn't sure)
When the birds did not return, I quickly arranged the location of the tent, removed the bricks blocking the nest a little for easy shooting, and the others also left the scene and went to work.
Maybe it was a change in the bird's nest and nearby, the parent bird did not come back for a long time, and after forty minutes of waiting, a white wagtail appeared on the roof, was this the nest of the white wagtail? Not sure.
After waiting for a few more minutes, the white partridge flew to the brick stack, did not bring back food, should have gone home to check the situation, hovered left and right in front of the nest, looked around, and tilted my head to look at my tent, I held my breath, did not dare to take a bold continuous shot, one by one, for fear of surprise to the parent birds did not dare to feed.
Checking out and not finding danger, the parent bird returns to the nest to hold the young bird, which may be afraid of the young bird, and the parent bird comforts the young bird!
At this time, another parent bird also returned, landing on the square brick where the nest was located, looking left and right, and looking at the tent from time to time, as if they had seen that these changes must be related to the big guy next to the brick stack! Ha ha!
Judging from the appearance, this returning parent bird should be a male.
The young birds are unharmed, and after making sure there is no danger, the two parent birds soon begin to feed in turn.
Because the young birds are too small to photograph the young birds eating, they decided to leave to shoot the tabby earthbirds that are about to fly, and come back a week later to shoot the white wagtail broods. (To be continued)
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