Lemon wagtail

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Lemon wagtail
Male lemon wagtail of the subspecies M. c. calcarata in splendor

Male lemon wagtail of the subspecies M. c. calcarata in splendor

Systematics
Order : Passerines (Passeriformes)
Subordination : Songbirds (passeri)
Superfamily : Passeroidea
Family : Stilts and pipiters (Motacillidae)
Genre : Stilts ( Motacilla )
Type : Lemon wagtail
Scientific name
Motacilla citreola
Pallas , 1776

The lemon wagtail ( Motacilla citreola ) is a songbird species from the family of stilts and pipiters . It is named after the lively lemon-yellow color of the head in the magnificent dress . The distribution area of ​​the species extends from Eastern Europe, northwest and Central Siberia southwards through Central Asia to the Himalayas. It inhabits open grasslands and is not uncommon to be found near water. The lemon wagtail is a migratory bird that mostly lives on the Indian subcontinent , but also in other parts of South Asiaoverwintered. In the course of the 20th century, the species shifted its western distribution limit further and further towards Central Europe, and the first isolated brood records have been here since the 1990s. The lemon wagtail is not threatened.

description

Winter plumage (probably a male)
Lemon wagtail in the first winter

The lemon wagtail is with a body length of 17-18 cm and a tail length of 6.5-8.0 cm slightly larger and slightly more long-tailed than a yellow wagtail . The wing length is between 80 and 90 mm. The slender beak is between 6 and 19 mm long, blackish and sometimes lightened gray to flesh-colored at the lower base. Feet and legs are blackish. The iris is dark brown in adult birds and gray-brown in younger birds. The sexes differ in the summer dress relatively clearly, in the plain dress , which hardly differs from the summer dress of the female, only slightly.

The male of the nominate form shows a lively lemon- colored head in a magnificent dress . Only in a few birds is there a gray tinge on the rear vertex and the ear covers. The yellow coloration continues on the underside and turns whitish towards the white under tail-coverts. A black band, usually about 1 cm wide, runs across the neck and extends to the sides of the upper chest. At the top it is clearly set off, at the bottom it runs in the medium gray color of the back. The rump is dark gray like most of the upper tail coverts, the longest ones are blackish like the middle four pairs of control feathers. These are finely lined with whitish, the fourth often has a white end border. The two outer pairs are predominantly white and only show a bit dark gray at the base of the inner flag. The wing plumage is predominantly black-brown with white edges. The marginal covers show the same color as the back. The large and middle arm covers have black-brown feather centers and broad white tips that form two conspicuous white wing bands. The outer flags of the large arm covers are also broadly lined with white. The black-brown wings have white hems that are particularly wide on the umbrella springs. The under wing-coverts are greyish, the longest have white tips. The whitish bases of the wing inner vents form a light field on the underside of the wing.

In the female in the summer dress, the yellow areas are less intense in color than in the male, sometimes appear a bit green and especially on the underside into the whitish. The flanks show a gray tint. In addition, a gray parting is pronounced, which begins washed out on the forehead. The intense yellow stripe around the eyes circles the rear edge of the ear covers and then continues to the sides of the neck. The ear covers are washed out yellowish in the center and gray on the edges. The gray of the neck and back shows a greenish tinge in the fresh plumage, the rump is a little more brownish gray than in the male.

In winter dress, only extremely colored individuals can be assigned to a gender. Most birds resemble the females in summer dress, but with some males the yellow areas are very intensely colored, with some females much paler than in summer dress.

The youth dress shows great resemblance to that of the yellow wagtail, but the stripe above the eyes is usually wider, cleaner and extends from the rear edge of the ear covers to the sides of the neck. The top is brown, the bottom is brownish beige. A beige stripe above the eyes is lined with a dark side stripe, a light beard stripe is framed in a dark brownish color and connected with a dark band across the upper breast. The hems of the wing feathers are colored beige-brown.

Birds in the first winter are similar to the adult birds in winter plumage, but they lack the yellow color, so that they can usually be easily distinguished from wagtails in the first winter. Another feature is the light-colored border around the ear covers that extends from the outer eye strip.

voice

The reputation of the lemon wagtail is a sharp, slightly rough tsriep that is harder than the corresponding reputation of the yellow wagtail. As an alarm call near the nest, it is repeated continuously. There is also a softer contact call described as tslie .

The singing is based on the typical calls and is quite different from one individual to the next. It usually consists of short phrases that begin with a hard syllable followed by two or three softer ones , such as tzschierip Tschererrie… tzschierip Tschererrie . There are chattering, very variable as well as monotonous, rhythmic variants in different tempo.

distribution

Distribution of the lemon wagtail:
  • Breeding areas
  • Year-round occurrence
  • Wintering areas

    • The distribution of the lemon wagtail extends in the Russian tundra from the east of the Kola peninsula to the Chatanga estuary, southeast of it to about 115 ° E and on the southern edge of the tundra region between Ob and Angara to about 65 ° N. A southern part extends from the outermost one West of Russia and Ukraine between 57 ° and 48 ° northwards through the Russian steppe regions to the Altai and via Mongolia to southeast Siberia and northwest Heilongjiang . To the south, the area border runs through western and central China to northern Yunnan and westward through the Himalayas to Afghanistan to the Pamir and Tian Shan . It is controversial whether the two large sub-areas in south and south-east Siberia adjoin each other seamlessly or have no connection. It is possible that they have grown together recently due to area expansions. There are further disjoint occurrences in West Pakistan and, due to the extent of the area to the west, in northern Iran and in eastern Turkey . Scattered breeding occurrences have also been present in the Baltic States and Poland for several years . There were isolated brood records in the Czech Republic , Germany , Austria , Sweden and Finland .

    hikes

    The lemon wagtail is a migratory bird that overwinters in South Asia, especially on the Indian subcontinent. The winter quarters extend from southern China through the north of Vietnam and Laos , northern and central Thailand and Myanmar eastward over the Indian subcontinent with the exception of southeast and southern India . There are also scattered wintering occurrences in Iran, where the species is mainly found on the north coast of the Persian Gulf , as well as in the south and east of the Arabian Peninsula and in Israel . Due to the extension of the area to the west, the species occurs regularly in many European countries - especially in Great Britain and Scandinavia . The departure takes place from mid-August to the beginning of November, the withdrawal from February and mainly between March and May. In the northern breeding areas, the species arrives in May and June.

    Geographic variation

    Up to six subspecies have been described, two to three of which are widely recognized. The males of the two subspecies M. c. citreola and M. c. calcarata in splendor. The latter are characterized by a black back. The subspecies werae is attributed to citreola by some authors and shows, among other things, a lighter back and a narrow black neck band in the breeding plumage. However, these differences are often only minor. The females vary only slightly in their summer dress and there is no marked difference in winter and youth clothing.

    • M. c. citreola Pallas , 1776 - Finland and northern Russia eastwards to central Siberia, Transbaikalia , Mongolia and northwestern northeast China
    • M. c. werea ( Buturlin , 1907) - Baltic states, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and southern Russia, Kazakhstan and northwestern China
    • M. c. calcarata Hodgson , 1836 - north and east of Iran and Afghanistan eastward to central China and southward to the Himalayas

    habitat

    The habitat requirements of the lemon wagtail are similar to those of the yellow wagtail, with which it can often be found in the same breeding places, but the species also occurs in very humid and more densely vegetated places. In the north of its range, the lemon wagtail inhabits the Strauchtundra made of dwarf birch , alder and willow bushes . In Russia the species inhabits sedge meadows with individual willow bushes and sewage fields . In the Central Asian steppe areas it often occurs on floodplains in lake basins, where it gladly takes on richly structured, open reed beds. The subspecies M. c. calcarata can be found on alpine meadows , in wet grassland and in the highlands of Tibet in humid valley floors in arable areas and in swampy areas of the high steppes. The altitude distribution extends up to 5000 meters in the Himalayas.

    The species is more likely to be found on migration than the shank wagtail in bank biotopes and wetlands.

    food

    The diet and food spectrum are also similar to those of the yellow wagtail. The latter consists mainly of insects and other arthropods , small snails and worms . However, since the lemon wagtail hardly catches insects in flight hunts, the quite large proportion of small dipteras typical of the wagtail is lower. Terrestrial forms are also captured far less often, as the lemon wagtail searches for food mainly on moist surfaces and wading in shallow water, in which the head is sometimes immersed. The food content of aquatic insect larvae, worms and water fleas is correspondingly high . In contrast to the yellow wagtail, food is not only sought near the nest during the breeding season, but mostly wet areas 100–200 m away. The species can hardly be found near cattle.

    Reproduction

    The breeding season begins in the north of the range between mid-May and late June, in the south between late April and early May. Usually there is an annual brood, occasionally a second. Like the yellow wagtail, the lemon wagtail often nests in loose colonies with a nest spacing between 13.5 and 64.0 m. The nest is built in mostly moist to waterlogging locations in old reeds or sedge nests. The neatly built bowl made of fine blades of grass is hardly lined in southern regions, but is well padded with animal hair and feathers in the tundra. It measures 11–13 cm in diameter and is 5–8 mm high. The 5.5–8.0 cm wide hollow is 3–4 cm deep. The clutch consists of 4–5, more rarely 6 round-oval, slightly shiny eggs, which are speckled so finely gray or light brown on a beige or grayish background that they appear monochrome. They are 19.5 × 14.5 mm in size. The breeding period is usually around 14 days, the nestling period is between 13 and 15 days.

    Inventory development

    While there has apparently hardly been any population change in the northern occurrences since 1900, the area boundary of the distribution in temperate Russia has shifted continuously to the west in the second half of the 20th century . In 1930 it ran along the cities of Nizhny Novgorod , Ryazan , Tambov and Penza about 300–400 km east of Moscow , and in the 1950s the species established itself there as a breeding bird. It reached the north-eastern border of Ukraine around 1970, and the first evidence of breeding was found there in 1976. The Baltic states were developed between 1987 and 1993 and northern Poland was settled in the 1990s. An area expansion has also been noticeable in Turkey since around 1995. Since then there have been numerous isolated breeding records in Central and Northern Europe.

    The world population is roughly estimated at 3–30 million adult individuals. According to the IUCN, the species is not threatened (“least concern”).

    literature

    Web links

    Commons : Lemons  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

    Individual evidence

    1. ↑ Zitronenstelze audio sample ; MP3; 214 kB
    2. ↑ http://www.club300.at/node/1021
    3. ↑ Alström / Mild, pp. 325f
    4. ↑ a b c Glutz v. Blotzheim, p. 832, p. literature
    5. ↑ a b Alström / Mild, p. 327f, s. literature
    6. ↑ Glutz v. Blotzheim, pp. 834f
    7. ↑ Glutz v. Blotzheim, p. 833f (see literature) and C. Harrison, P. Castell, H. Hoerschelmann: Young birds, eggs and nests of birds - Europe, North Africa and the Middle East , Aula Verlag, Wiebelsheim 2004, ISBN 3-89104- 685-5
    8. ↑ Glutz v. Blotzheim, p. 829 and Baumanis et al., S. Literature
    9. ↑ BirdLife species factsheet