Eastern Yellow Wagtail Life History

Habitat

Eastern Yellow Wagtails breed in wet, open habitats with some shrubby vegetation. In Alaska, this species typically nests in wetter areas of grassy tundra with willow thickets or other shrubby vegetation. In other parts of its range, Eastern Yellow Wagtail breeds in wet meadows, along creeks with cut banks, atop river bluffs, and in cattle pastures near water. During migration and the nonbreeding season, this species occurs in wet grasslands, pastures, and just about any open area associated with some water.

Food

During the breeding season, Eastern Yellow Wagtails feed mainly on insects, especially flies, caddisflies, bees, and wasps. Other prey items include beetles, butterflies, and moths. They are primarily terrestrial foragers, picking prey from the ground, but they also catch some aerial insects by flycatching.

Nesting

Nest Placement

Female builds the nest on the ground, placing it on mosses, sedges, or in a cavity that she may excavate. Nest is also commonly placed in cut banks of creeks, roadsides, and natural ditches. Often located under tussocks, hummocks, shrubs, and other overhanging vegetation for protection.

Nest Description

A small cup lined with fine grasses and either ptarmigan feathers or mammal fur. The outer part of the cup is built mainly with grasses, with some shredded bark, dead leaves, lichens, and moss also added.

Nesting Facts

Behavior

Eastern Yellow Wagtails are conspicuous—walking and running in open areas to forage, wagging their tails and flashing the white outer feathers, and giving loud, piercing calls incessantly when alarmed. Calling birds sit on the highest perches in the area, and when disturbed, may hover over intruders. Typical flight is strongly undulating, with a flurry of wingbeats followed by a long glide on closed wings.

Eastern Yellow Wagtails are socially monogamous, but extra-pair matings are fairly common. When a female first appears on the territory of a singing male, he performs an advertising display with puffed out breast feathers, lowered wings, and a fanned-out tail. He then switches to a song flight, in which he flies up steeply from the ground, curves his wings downward, spreads and lifts his tail almost perpendicular to his body, floats downward towards the ground while singing, and then lifts up again just before reaching the ground. The female builds the nest and does most of the incubating, although the male does incubate as well. Both parents feed the chicks, which typically leave the nest when they are 12–13 days old and begin feeding themselves about 5 days later. After the breeding season, Eastern Yellow Wagtails gather into small groups of 8–20 birds, and during migration, the species forms huge roosts that sometimes number thousands of birds.

Conservation

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists Eastern Yellow Wagtail’s conservation status as Least Concern. Although this wagtail’s population trend appears to be decreasing, this species has an extremely large population size (estimated by IUCN as 50,000,000–150,000,000 mature individuals) and an extremely large range. Partners in Flight, which is focused on bird conservation in the Americas, estimates Eastern Yellow Wagtail’s global population at 20,000,000 breeding individuals and rates the species an 8 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score, indicating a species of low conservation concern.

Credits

Alström P, Mild K, Zetterström B 2003 Pipits and wagtails of Europe, Asia and North America. Christopher Helm, London

Badyaev, A. V., B. Kessel, D. D. Gibson, J. del Hoyo, and N. Collar (2020). Eastern Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla tschutschensis), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.eaywag.01

BirdLife International. 2019. Motacilla tschutschensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019: e.T103822471A154735918. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2019-3.RLTS.T103822471A154735918.en.

Brazil, M. (2009). Birds of East Asia: China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and Russia. Christopher Helm, London, UK.

Dunne, P. (2006). Pete Dunne's essential field guide companion. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, USA.

Grimmett, R., C. Inskipp, and T. Inskipp (1999). A Guide to the Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA.

Partners in Flight. 2024. Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2024. Available at http://pif.birdconservancy.org/ACAD.

Sibley, D. A. (2014). The Sibley Guide to Birds, second edition. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, USA.

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