Figure 266. This Gray Wagtail, photographed on 10 October 1988 at the mouth of the Salinas River in Monterey County, remains the only one recorded in the coterminous United States (1988-180; Larry Sansone).

 

 

 

 

 

 

GRAY WAGTAIL Motacilla cinerea Tunstall, 1771

Accepted: 1 (33%)	Treated in Appendix H: no
Not accepted: 2	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 0	Large color image: see Figure

Migratory populations of this wagtail breed in parts of Europe, in the Caucasus region, and across most of eastern and central Asia, including Kamchatka, Sakhalin, Japan, and northern Korea. The wintering grounds stretch from western Europe and northern Africa, where resident populations exist, east through parts of eastern Africa and the Middle East, and across Southeast Asia, the East Indies, and western New Guinea. The species is a casual migrant, primarily in spring, through the Commander and western Aleutian Islands and has reached the Pribilof Islands and St. Lawrence Island. An 8 November 1991 sight record from southwestern British Columbia has been treated as valid (BJ 10:50-51), and on 26 October 2004 one was photographed near the southern tip of Vancouver Island, British Columbia (NAB 59:134, 191).

California’s single record of the Gray Wagtail refers to a bird of undetermined age, sex, and subspecies that was present 9–10 October 1988 at the Salinas River estuary in Monterey County (Figure 266).