Wagtail Showing Characters of Ashy-headed at Ogston
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On Saturday 16th April 2005 after checking Williamthorpe, I visited Ogston Reservoir. Good
numbers of Hirundines were present around the car park and I saw a male Wheatear briefly. While
photographing the hirundines I had heard that Mick Blount had seen a Common Sandpiper and a
Yellow Wagtail in front of the hide. After a while I went to the hide, where I saw a flava
wagtail in flight but little else so I decided to return to the car park to photograph the
hirundines. Later I met Mick Blount who informed me that the wagtail had been an unusual bird in
having a greyish head, and he had wondered about the possibility of it being a Blue-headed.
Meanwhile Mike Conroy and Steve Olejniczak had also by now seen the bird in front of the hide and
asked me to have a look at it to hopefully decide what race it was. We went back to the hide and
although I stayed there for well over an hour, the bird failed to show, so I left Ogston and went for a
walk down Cromford Canal.
During the early evening on my way home I decided to call at Ogston to
have another look for the wagtail. On arrival I was informed that it had been showing in front
of the hide for some time, though opinion still seemed to be divided on what race it was.
Reaching the car park I met Mike Conroy who was studying the illustrations of wagtails in his
field guide. Still expecting it to be a Blue-headed/Channel type Wagtail I was very intrigued by
Mike's description of its appearance. He said that it lacked a supercilium and he thought it had
a white throat, both features indicative of cinereocapilla or Ashy-headed Wagtail. We
quickly returned to the hide and soon located the bird and I was able to confirm the features
described by Mike. Shortly afterwards Mike telephoned Roy Frost, and I put the news out on
Birdnet as "showing characters of" which seems to be the standard terminolgy used to record races
of Yellow Wagtail.
Unfortunately the bird remained quite distant and although views were good with the scope it was
too far to get any really decent pictures, constantly moving in and out of the grass. I did
manage to get a few record shots, four of which appear below. After a while the bird was chased
off by a Little Ringed Plover and did not show again for about 40 minutes and unfortunately I had
to leave. Apparently the bird showed better after I had left the hide so hopefully there are some
better photos in existence.
At about 19.45 hrs the bird was seen to fly off high in a NW direction and there were no sightings
the following day.
The bird showed all features of a classic male Ashy-headed. The crown was fairly dark grey with
a lavender tinge, appearing very smooth. This colouration extended onto the ear coverts and lower
cheeks and continued down the nape to meet the olive-green mantle. The lores appeared darker,
almost blackish at times, this colouration extending narrowly around and below the eye,
appearing to end just before the ear coverts. The chin and throat were clean white, and together
they formed an extensive white bib. The rest of the birds plumage appeared very similar to a
flavissima Yellow Wagtail but unfortunately there were no others present to allow
comparisons to be made.
The wingbars appeared fairly broad but were often hidden by overlapping breast and flank feathers.
I got the impression that they appeared perhaps marginally broader than on an average Yellow
Wagtail and perhaps slightly more similar to each other, whereas on many Yellow Wagtails I've
noticed that the median covert bar often appears broader and more prominent than the bar on the
greater coverts, though this would at best be a very marginal difference.
Ashy-headed Wagtails breed in Italy, Sardinia and Sicilly and apparently intergrades with
flava in southern Austria and parts of the former Yugoslavia and with iberiae in
Corsica and parts of North Africa.
This is the first recorded occurence of this race in Derbyshire.
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