Bird Research News

Vol.2 No.10

2005. 10.12.

Japanese Wagtail

Seguro-Sekirei (Jpn) Motacilla grandis
Breeding system:

Morphology and classification
Classification: Passeriformes Motacillidae
Total length:
Max wingspan:
Tail length:
Culmen length:
Tarsus length:
Weight:211mm♂ 96.8 ± 2.0 mm♂ 98.7 ± 2.8 mm♂ 19.1 ± 0.6 mm♂ 26.4 ± 0.9 mm♂ 31.2 ± 2.3 g♀ 92.7 ± 2.0 mm♀ 94.8 ± 2.5 mm♀ 18.1 ± 0.5 mm♀ 25.0 ± 0.8 mm♀ 28.0 ± 1.5 g

The total length after Enomoto (1941). Others based on the individuals captured in
Utsunomiya City (mean ± SD).

Appearance:
Adult male and female are the samein color except on the back. Head,chest, legs and bill are black, while
the belly is white. The back of a maleis black but that of a female is graytinged black. Japanese Wagtails havea small white patch under the base ofa bill and eyebrows which are connected on the forehead. Juveniles
have gray plumage with the abdomen
paler and eyebrows indistinct. This
species molts once a year.

Photo 1. Male Japanese
Wagtail.

Japanese Wagtails are normally monogamous, but onrare occasions bigamous(Hirano 1981, 1989, Ohsako& Yamagishi 1989). Aroundlate January, the male begins
to sing on a stone, driftwoodand at the end of a branch.
His singing frequency reach- Photo 3. Communal roost of Japanese
Wagtails.
es its peak in late February.
Nest building starts in late
February at the earliest. The first egg-laying occurs from midMarch to late March. Some of the pairs breed twice a year. Although females roost in the nest while incubating and nestling, bothfemales and males roost in the reed bed within their territory inother periods.
Both sexes hold their territory even in winter. Singing and territorial disputes become active again around October. The territorial
disputes occur mainly at the waterside. The male performs a ritualized fighting with another male, and the female with another female (Hirano 1981). When a stream dries up due to drought and afavorable foraging site emerges, the site attracts a large number ofJapanese Wagtails, which feed in a temporal flock. During the non-breeding season, Japanese Wagtails roost in a group in the reed
bed of a river or roadside trees.

Vocalization:

Nest:

Call is Jee or Jijee. Song sounds like Pyijui, Jui-jui-jui-jui, Ji-ji-ji
and Giji-ji-ji-ji-ji (Figure 1). The species calls “jui-jui” or “Jijijui”
repeatedly in a territorial dispute.

Japanese Wagtails build a nest
under the fallen grass or trees of ariverbed and the gaps in a bridge
girder or a building. The female
mainly brings nest materials andthe male sometimes does. Dried
grass is used as exterior nest materials and soft materials, such as
Photo 4. Eggs in a nestfeathers and animal hair are used
for the inner lining. The species also uses as nest materials cigarette filters and the cotton of a bed pad abandoned in a riverbed.

by courtesy of Ibis/BOU.

Fig. 1. Sonogram of a Japanese Wagtail song (Higuchi & Hirano 1989) .

Clutch size and reproductive performance:

Distribution and Habitat
Japanese Wagtails are an endemic species to Japan. They breed in
Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, Sado Island and Oki Island.
However, they are winter visitors in Tsushima Island, YakushimaIsland, the Izu Islands, Amami Oshima Island and the KoreanPeninsula (Ornithological Society of Japan 2000).

Japanese Wagtails usually lay 4 - 6 eggs with an egg a day. The
incubation period is 13 to 14 days. Both sexes brood eggs, but thefemale incubates during the night. The male and female rear chicks
together. The young fledge about 14 days after hatching. Thefledgelings are fed by the parents for about 3 weeks. The study inthe Kinugawa River, Utsunomiya showed that the breeding success rate was very low in the pairs nesting on the ground of theriverbed (Hirano unpublished data).

Habitat:

Diet:

Distribution:

Japanese Wagtails are residents
in most regions of Japan, where
both sexes hold their territories
throughout the year. In Honshu(the main island of Japan), theyoccur in rivers, lakes, rice paddies and residential areas fromthe lowlands to the mountains.
However, they prefer rivers
with well-developed gravel
sandbars.

In addition to the adults and larvae of aquatic insects, such as
caddisflies, mayflies, dragonflies and midges, Japanese Wagtails
capture small fish. They catch the larvae in the water while walking along the waterside. They also fly-catch flying insects.

Topics of ecology, behavior and conservation
Photo 2. River with welldeveloped gravel sandbar
which is a favorable habitat forJapanese Wagtails (The KinuRiver, Utsunomiya).

Life history
1223456breeding season

789molting period

1011 12non-breedingseason♪ http://www.bird-research.jp/1_shiryo/koe/seguroseki_090312_nasu_hirano.mp3
Toshiaki Hirano● Strange partial albinism
Partial albinism occasionally occurs in many bird species, but it
tends to develop on the head in Japanese Wagtails. Interestingly, itis reported that the head plumage patterns by partial albinism inJapanese Wagtails are strikingly similar to those of some White
Wagtail sub-species (Higuchi Hirano, 1983, Uchida 1995). For
example, the heads of some albinistic Japanese Wagtails are exactly like those of Motacilla alba lugens, M. a. leucopsis, and M. a.

♪ http://www.bird-research.jp/1_shiryo/koe/seguroseki_090102_utsunomiya_hirano.mp3
Toshiaki Hirano

Bird Research News

Vol.2 No.10

2005. 10.12.

© Japan Bird Research Association
Sumiyoshi 1-29-9, Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan
alboides distributed in Southeast
Asia. The study at a communalroost of Japanese Wagtails
showed that partial albinos accounted for 1.6% of a total of730 birds (Uchida 1995).
However, the calls of the partial
albinos were those of Japanese
Wagtails and their mates werealso Japanese wagtails. In addi- Photo 5. Partial albino of Japation, no inter-specific pairs werenese Wagtails (White Wagtailtype).
observed in a large number ofJapanese Wagtails during thebreeding season in Utsunomiya, Tochigi Pref.. Therefore, Higuchi
and Hirano (1983) assumed that partially albinistic wagtails wereJapanese Wagtails, and neither partially melanistic White Wagtails
nor hybirds of Japanese and White Wagtails. They maintained thatthe similarity between the head albinistic patterns of Japanese
Wagtails and the head plumage patterns of White Wagtails implied
the close affinity between the two species. In addition, Uchida(1995) suspected that the ancestors of Japanese Wagtails had thefeather coloration similar to that of modern White Wagtails.
Since some Japanese Wagtails are remarkably similar to White
Wagtails, it is necessary to distinguish between the two species inthe field based on not only plumage and appearance but also specific characteristics, such as calls and display postures.

● Interesting worlds of Japanese and White Wagtails

Time spent along rivers (min / hr)In the 1970s White Wagtails Motacilla alba lugens gradually expanded the breeding distribution in Japan, and therefore the breeding range greatly overlapped with that Japanese Wagtails. ThisWhite Wagtail subspecies began to breed around 1975 even inUtsunomiya, Tochigi Pref. which is located inland. Our study of
the relationship between Japanese and White Wagtails in Utsunomiya in the early 1980s showed that White Wagtails bred in industrial parks, built-up areas and rivers in the vicinity of these areas
where the population density of Japanese Wagtails was low(Higuchi & Hirano 1981, Hirano 1985). In the Tagawa River flowing through the town where the two species were similar in densityof population, however, they had overlapping territories.
On the other hand, these two sympatric wagtails were slightly
different in habitat preference, feeding habit and social behavior.
Although the territories of the two species extensively overlapped,
the areas with frequent use tended to be distinctly separate between them. A river was central to the home range of Japanese
Wagtails, which spent most of the time along a river, defending
their territories vigorously, while White Wagtails used a river aspart of the range for a short period of time, thus not so intent on
territory defense (Fig. 2). In addition, the feeding site and methods
were also different between the two species. Japanese Wagtails
foraged mainly on the ground70
and sometimes in the water.
White Wagtails, on the other60
hand, primarily foraged in a50
dry place and frequently
40
adopted a flycatching method
30(Higuchi & Hirano 1983).
Japanese Wagtails started
20
breeding almost one month10
earlier than White Wagtails.
0It was assumed that theseJapanese Wagtails White Wagtails
differences in reliance onrivers, foraging methods andFig. 2. The time spent by Japanese
breeding periods between theand White Wagtails along rivers.
Based on Higuchi & Hirano
two species contributed to1983.
their sympatric coexistence

バードリサーチ生態図鑑(Higuchi & Hirano 1989).
Twenty years have passed since then and the breeding range ofWhite Wagtails has expanded further in Tochigi Prefecture. Now
they commonly breed in the waterside and even in cities, such as
Utsunomiya from lowlands to mountains. It seems that they havemarkedly increased in number. So I studied the distribution of
three species of wagtails in the same area of Utsunomiya as in1985 during the breeding season of 2004. The results showed thatWhite Wagtails commonly occurred in large rivers and paddy
fields where few had been observed in the previous study (Hiranosubmitted) and that the range of Japanese Wagtails, on the otherhand, did not change greatly. This indicated that White Wagtails
did not displace Japanese Wagtails through interspecific competition. Since White Wagtails have remarkably increased in number,
it is interesting to know whether the mechanism of coexistence ofthe two species remains the same as before.

Literature
Choi C. & Nam H. 2008. Distribution of the Japanese Wagtail Motacilla grandis inKorea. Ornithol. Sci.7:85-91.
Enomoto Y. 1941. The body size of Japanese birds. Japan Wild Bird Society Osaka
Branch, Osaka. [J]Higuchi H. & Hirano T. 1981. Breeding record and habitat of White Wagtail Motacilla alba in Tochigi Prefecture. Tori 29:121-128. [J+E]
Higuchi H. & Hirano T. 1983. Comparative ecology of White and Japanese Wagtails, Motacilla alba and M. grandis, in winter. Tori 32:1-11.
Higuchi H. & Hirano T. 1983. Feather color variation of individual Japanese Wagtails. Strix 2: 76-84. [J+E]
Higuchi H. & Hirano T. 1989. Breeding season, courtship behaviour, and territoriality of White and Japanese Wagtails Motacilla alba and M. grandis. Ibis 131:578-588.
Hirano T. 1981. On the relationship between the territory and pair relations of theJapanese Wagtail Motacilla grandis. Tori 30:23-36. [J+E]
Hirano T. 1981. Japanese Wagtail that bred bigamously. Yacho 45: 356 -359. [J]Hirano T. 1985. Breeding habitats of three wagtails in Utsunomiya. Strix 4:1-8.
[J+E]
Hirano T. 1989. Japanese Wagtail that bred in a trio of one-male and two females.
Jpn. J. Ornithol. 38: 102-104. [J+E]
Ornithological Society of Japan. 2012. Bird List of Japan Seventh Edition. [J+E]
Ohsako Y. & Yamagishi S. 1989. Pair relationships and female-female aggression
in the occasionally bigamous Japanese Wagtail Motacilla grandis. Jpn. J. Ornithol. 37 :89-101. [J+E]
Uchida H. 1995. On feather color variation in Japanese Wagtails (Motacilla grandis) in Saitama Prefecture. Bird banding 10 (1) :63-75. [J+E]

AuthorToshiaki HIRANO Japan Bird Research Association
When I came upon the familiar
numbers of leg bands in my old
field note book, I was remindedof the moments with those birds
as if it was yesterday. Twenty
years have passed since then andwagtails have changed dramatically in Utsunomiya, Tochigi
Prefecture. I am concerned
about how Japanese Wagtails
are getting along where White
Wagtails dominate.
k-grandis@helen.ocn.ne.jp3