gray wagtail in the garden

[243kingfisher]

Hi, the other day a gray wagtail paid a visit to my garden. Iv had pied wagtails before but never gray's the thing is though i live no where near water. please could anybody tell me why this gray wagtail came in to an urben area with no rivers and is this an unusual sighting?

Many thanks.

[Brocakat]

Hi, 243kingfisher, - my explanation is - that at this time of year, your Grey Wagtail has found out that there4 are more/easier pickings in urban areas than by a typical watercourse where it reared / was itself reared, over the last summer.
Most Grey Waggies areAll-Year-Round Residents, except up in the Scottish Highlands, where they probably come down into the Clyde Valley & Borders/North of England to miss the very harsh winter weather, and these are joined in East Anglia by others from Scandinavia, for the same reason.

But in wintertime they will have overcome their relative shyness to get more
food from the town gardens & parks, than from their natural environment.

Pied Waggies seem to me to have caught on earlier to this idea & are much more established, and I see them on a regular basis, patrolling supermarket car parks. I'm pleased as it's the opportunist species who are more likley to survive & prosper.

[aeshna5]

They can be found around London all year, though more birds turn up in the autumn. Several times I've walked down Oxford Street (hard to imagine a less bird friendly place) + heard Grey Wagtails calling as they flit between building tops.

During the summer I watched one singing on the top of Ealing Broadway Station. Other than occasional puddles, not much water here!

[Harold Smith]

In the last couple of weeks I have had several garden visits from Grey Wagtails. They mostly wander around the pond looking for insects.

In the winter they tend move into towns which are warmer and there are more insects about to feed on.

Most mornings, as I go to get the paper, I will hear or see Grey Wagtails perching on roof tops or flying over.

Harold.