WONDER OF WAGTAILS

A STARTLING flash of colour, near neon in its intensity, heralded the visitor's arrival.

- MIKE LOCKLEY Sunday Mercury Writer

The bird's yellow plumage dazzled in the sunlight as it strutted the gulleys separating lines of a newly planted crop.

At first I thought a particularly bright yellowhammer had made a rare descent to ground level.

Then the constantly bobbing tail and long, slim body gave the game away.

A yellow wagtail - the most stunning and rarest of our wagtails - had arrived from its wintering ground in the Sahara.

Every year, a mere handful make it to my parish. I'm not sure whether they nest here or move on, but they are a Technicolor dream during a country walk.

The yellow wagtail's haunts have altered in recent years, perhaps in a bid to end the population plummet it is enduring.

The bird was once very much associated with streams and boggy land, but is now seen much more frequently on cultivated fields, it is a farmland species. It has always been associated with cattle.

And this beautiful species - the only one of Britain's wagtails that's not here all year round - is enduring a severe crisis. Over the last 30 years, numbers have reduced dramatically.

Changes in farming practices are thought to be the key driver for the drop in numbers.

Greatbritishlife.co.uk explains: "A summer visitor from Africa, the yellow wagtail was a bird of wet meadows and pastures, frequently seen foraging in the muddy edges of streams, ditches and pools, and around the feet of cattle, searching for small insects like beetles and flies.

"Sights like this are still common throughout the summer in Eastern Europe where agriculture is less intensive, however with the dramatic changes in commercial agricultural practices in the UK, and the associated impacts on the landscape and environ-ment, yellow wagtail populations have been declining rapidly since the early 1980s.