🦉 The white wagtail (Motacilla alba) (May be hybrid)
📚 Motacilla lat .: mōto, mōtare move continuously, -cilla tail (cilla like a tail - only in ornithology, erroneous established name)
📚 alba (lat.) white
As I told in the last post about this bird, this wagtail attracted me very much with her unusual appearance. In these photos, I stretched out the shadows and brightened the dark areas to make it clearer what I mean.
Take a closer look, pay attention to her face. Instead of black or white, she has a brown spot there, as well as under the tail. And no, this is not dirt, and not the consequences of molting. This is her plumage.
Obviously this is a hybrid of two species, or maybe a mutation. To find out, I had to find scientific work on the species of these birds, and I found this - "Hybridization of white (Motachilla Alba Linnaeus) and masked (M.A. Personata Gould) wagtails in southern Siberia.
Here is a screenshot from this research paper.
As you can see on this map, the spread of these wagtails just affects the boundaries of my city.
Simply put, maybe I was able to take a photo of a hybrid, or rather some of its intermediate form.
