Magpie WESTERN BIRDS 



GENUS PICA: MAGPIE. 

 Magpie: Pica pica hudsonia. 



FAMILY— CORVIDiE: CROWS, JAYS, MAGPIES, 



ETC. 



SUBFAMILY— GARRULIN^: MAGPIES 

 AND JAYS. 



The Black-billed Magpie is one of the most striking 

 of American birds, and will commend itself to the bird 

 student because it is unmistakable. 



The adults are from seventeen and one-half inches 

 long to nearly twenty-two, and are a bronzy iridescent 

 black, save for white belly and wing patches; the tail 

 is very long and graduated ; bill and naked skin of orbital 

 region, black. The young lack the bronzy gloss on the 

 head. They are, indeed, showy creatures as they fly 

 through the air, the long graduated tail spread, and the 

 white of wings showing in marked contrast to the black 

 plumage. 



They range from northwestern America to northern 

 Arizona and New Mexico, and from eastern slope of the 

 Cascades and Sierra Nevada to western North Dakota 

 and western Texas; casual in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, 

 Michigan, Ontario, and the Hudson Bay region. Breed- 

 ing range in California east of the Sierra Nevada, north 

 to Shasta Valley, south to Mono Lake. 



The nest of these birds is a marvelous affair, being a 

 mud cup lined with grasses, rootlets, pine needles, and 

 hair, surrounded by a globular mass of coarse sticks, 

 sometimes as big as a bushel basket, placed usually three 



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