Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE SPARROW-LIKE BIRDS

THE SONG BIRDS

THE WAGTAILS AND PIPITS

(Family Motacillida)
The family Motacillidce, comprising the Wagtails and Pipits, is a small one, embracing less than one hundred forms of mostly plain-plumaged birds, of almost world-wide distribution. Certain of them — more especially the Pipits — have a strong, albeit superficial resemblance to the Larks (Alaudidce), but they are distinguished from them at once by the different form and scutellation of the tarsus. They are insectivorous birds of eminently terrestrial habits, walking or running on the ground in a graceful,”mincing”manner instead of hopping, and frequenting mostly open places, such as prairies, fields, deserts, banks of rivers and ponds, and sometimes marshes, though a few, as the true Pipits, seek their food on the ground amidst thin underbrush, occasionally hopping into the lower branches when alarmed. They have slender conoid bills which are always shorter than the head and slightly notched subterminally, long slender tarsi, and slender toes, the claw of the hind toe (hallux) being usually elongated and equal to or even exceeding the digit in length. Their wings are rather long and pointed, the outermost four or five of the nine primaries being longest, while the innermost secondaries are greatly elongated, often equaling and sometimes exceeding the longest primaries; the tail is variable in length, but is never much shorter, and is sometimes longer, than the wing, being longest in the Wagtails.

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