The Western Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla flava) is the White Wagtail's brilliantly coloured relative, a lively bird of open wetlands and pastures. The male has a lemon-yellow underside and an olive-green back, and in the form most common in Sweden also shows a blue-grey crown and a white eyebrow stripe; the female is paler and more plainly marked. It measures 15–16 cm with a wingspan of about 23–27 cm and weighs 16–22 g, and has a shorter tail than the White Wagtail but shares its constant tail-wagging and undulating flight.
Its most common call is a soft, slightly rising "tsjipp" or "psii," often given by birds in flight, while the song is a modest, short series of twittering and whistling notes delivered from a bush, tussock or post — softer and less sharp than the Grey Wagtail's. It breeds across much of Sweden wherever suitable open, damp ground exists, nesting on the ground in a shallow scrape well hidden among grass tufts on wet meadows and pastures, where the female lays 5–6 eggs incubated for about two weeks. The species feeds on insects and other small invertebrates, often foraging alongside grazing livestock, which disturb flies and other insects out of the grass for the wagtail to catch. A long-distance migrant, it arrives in May and leaves in August to winter in Africa. The Swedish population, in the hundreds of thousands of pairs, shows a declining trend linked to wetland drainage, the cessation of traditional grazing and more intensive farming.
Read about this species in Swedish →