Eastern Yellow Wagtail

It is a slender 15–16 cm long bird, with the characteristic long, constantly wagging tail of its genus. The breeding adult male is basically olive-green above and yellow below. In other plumages, particularly first-winter birds but also many females, the yellow may be diluted by white. The heads of breeding males come in a variety of colours and patterns depending on subspecies. The bill and legs are black; the hind claw is long and not strongly curved, which distinguishes it reliably from western yellow wagtail which has a shorter, more strongly curved hind claw (though this is often difficult to observe on birds in grass). The call is a characteristic high-pitched zrri or jeet, shriller and more rasping than the call of western yellow wagtails.

This species breeds in the East Palearctic and has a foothold in North America in Alaska. Most migrate to south-east Asia and Australia in the winter but the non-breeding range extends as far west as eastern India and Sri Lanka. Vagrant individuals can occur away the winter quarters at migration time. For example, on Palau in Micronesia migrant flocks of this species – apparently of the Bering Sea yellow wagtail, and including many adult males – are regularly seen, while further north on the Marianas, only the occasional stray individuals (usually females or immatures) are encountered. Since the advent of easier DNA testing of droppings and clarification of its identification features, it has proved to be a surprisingly frequent late autumn and winter vagrant in western and northwestern Europe, with ten or more records in some autumns in both Britain and Sweden, and multiple cases of birds overwintering.

This insectivorous bird inhabits open country near water, such as wet meadows. It nests in tussocks, laying 4–8 speckled eggs. The Acanthocephalan parasite Apororhynchus paulonucleatus was discovered in the colon and cloaca of the eastern yellow wagtail.