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Citrine Wagtail

Citrine Wagtail

Motacilla citreola

Identify the Citrine Wagtail by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

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The Citrine Wagtail is a slim, long-tailed wagtail of wet meadows, marshes and tundra across the central Palearctic. Breeding males have a bright lemon-yellow head and underparts, a grey back and a black collar, while females and young are paler and greyer. It winters in South and Southeast Asia and has been spreading west, producing more vagrants in Europe. Its taxonomy is tricky, forming a complex with the yellow wagtails.

Did you know?

  • “Citrine” refers to the lemon-yellow tones of breeding males.
  • Like other wagtails, it hardly ever stops wagging its tail while feeding.

Voice

Flight call

About the species

Identification

The size of a Western Yellow Wagtail (about 15–17 cm). The male has a bright yellow head and underparts, a grey back and two clear white wing bars; the female's yellow is more subdued. Compared with Western Yellow Wagtail the back is grey (not greenish) and the wing bars stand out. Young birds may lack yellow and resemble young Yellow Wagtails; then the grey back, white wing bars and pale surround to the ear coverts help.

Family

Motacillidae

Size

Small (sparrow)

Colours

yellow, grey, black, white

About the habitat

Open, wet habitats – marshes, sedge meadows, floodplains, shores of ponds and lakes, slow river edges and ditches; in winter also rice fields and highland wetlands.

Diet

Mainly small invertebrates – flies, midges, beetles and aquatic larvae – picked from mud, short vegetation and shallow water, sometimes caught in flight.

Behaviour

An active ground forager that walks and runs along water edges, constantly wagging its tail, and often perches on reeds or low stems. It nests on or near the ground in dense waterside vegetation, laying 4–5 speckled eggs.

Sources

Photo: Ikshan Ganpathi, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Citrine Wagtail at Nalsarovar Bird Sanctuary.jpg

Sound: Jochem Verweij, XC930652, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/930652

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrine_wagtail

See also