Yellow Wagtail Motacilla flava

The Yellow Wagtail, Motacilla flava, is a slender and vividly coloured summer migrant belonging to the family Motacillidae, arriving from West Africa each spring. British breeding birds belong to the subspecies flavissima, males of which are a brilliant combination of yellow-green above and intense yellow below, with a yellow supercilium – among the most striking of any British bird in full breeding plumage. An active, terrestrial forager, it bobs and dashes through wet grassland, meadows, and the margins of freshwater habitats in pursuit of invertebrates, often associating with grazing livestock. The Yellow Wagtail has declined steeply as a breeding bird in Britain due to the loss of wet grassland and changes in agricultural practice, and is a Red List species, with Suffolk’s river valleys and coastal grazing marshes holding some of the county’s remaining breeding pairs. Image: © Neil Rolph, Flickr.

Find out more: RSPB, Suffolk Wildlife Trust, iNaturalist