Luckily I was able to get down late afternoon to try and get some more Yellow Wagtail images. I had wanted to get down first thing in the morning but unfortunately the day before I had accidentally driven over the cat on the driveway !. The cat had been lazing on the driveway and so I approached very slowly, it usually is aware of the car and moves away, but this time I had stopped to talk to Sarah at the kitchen window stopping short of the cat so I can only presume it thought I wasn't going any further..... but when I moved on the cat got caught. To cut it short, the cat is fine and only muscle swelling to one leg was incurred.
With cat okay I could concentrate on the wagtails, and the female today decided to venture closer albeit cautiously. The male definitely had his work cut out though, now that the female Yellow' was venturing more into the open the other male Yellows' obviously had an interest in courting her. On a few occasions a new male would appear, sometimes without the resident male noticing, and then try wooing her with its puffed up plumage. On one occasion the visiting male obviously knew the resident male was around and it flattened itself on the ground then when the time was right made a move on the female, she remonstrated to this and a scrap ensued only for the paired male to join in and all three disappeared over the fields.
The colour of the male Yellow wagtails is so vibrant on some that images look like they have been saturated in photoshop,especially with the sun setting, but this has not been the case. Most of the time I set my camera manually because the vibrancy of the yellow plumage causes the camera to misread and underexpose, a stunner of a bird for sure. So with a few more new images I decided to go and start my chores at home.
