Like you Paul, I have been thoroughly enjoying this article since it dropped through my letter box. It was about time someone gave this species the treatment it deserved as much of what (little) has been written in the past was vague, over-simplified, misleading and in some instances just plain wrong. I have long been interested in this anonymous little species (mainly because of a lack of any other regularly encountered difficult ID groups around here!) but have been frustrated by the lack of any peer-reviewed ID articles to go on but thankfully that has now been greatly improved and it seems my own thoughts that in autumn especially, the two can be very difficult to seperate, are clearly the case in this very thoroughly researched peice of work. I had been accumulating photos of the species and it was nice to be able to utilise their criteria against these images. It seems there is still an awful lot of work to be done on them though and that many will remain 'intermediates' but what is does encourage is more closer scrutiny of Pied Wagtails for me, to study their variability etc. Lots of time spent in shopping centre car parks then

Just recieved the latest copy of Dutch Birding, a very interesting article on Pied/white Wagtail identification. Well worth a read if you can get your hands on a copy