270 CROWS, JAYS, MAGPIES, ETC. 



475. Pica pica hudsonica (Sab.). Black-billed Magpie. 



Adults. — Black, varied with bronzy iridescence, except for white belly 

 and wing patches ; tail long- and graduated ; bill and naked skin of orbital 

 region black. Young: head without bronzy gloss. Length: 17.40-21.70, 

 wing 7.30-8.40, tail it.oO-11.95. exposed culmen 1.15-1.42, tarsus 1.70-1.92. 



Distribution. — Resident, except perhaps in extreme northern part of 

 its range, from Alaska and Hudson Bay to northern parts of Arizona and 

 New Mexico ; and from western Nebraska, west to eastern slopes of Sierra 

 Nevada and Cascades. 



Nest. — A mud cup lined with rootlets, grass, hair, and pine needles, 

 surrounded by a globular mass of coarse sticks sometimes as big as a bushel 

 basket, placed usually o to 20 feet from the ground in willows, thorn bushes, 

 bullberry bushes, small oaks, cottonwoods, and pines. Eggs : usually 7, 

 grayish, heavily and evenly blotched with brown, often almost hiding the 

 ground color. 



Food. — Small mammals, birds, their young and eggs, and crawfish, but 

 mainly insects, including a destructive black cricket, grasshoppers, grubs, 

 and larvae, together with some fruit, berries, and green leaves. 



Tlie magpie is a feature of the landscape, whether seen in flight 

 as a black air-ship with white side-wheelers and long black rudder 

 moving against a background of red cliffs in tlie Garden of the Gods, 

 or seen standing as a lay figure on a stone wall in a Mormon village. 

 There is always a freedom and largeness about his proceedings. 

 Sometimes he will take wing so near that you see the green gloss on 

 his back, flying with even water level flight far and away till he 

 becomes a black dot and disappears beyond your field of vision. His 

 masterful, positive character is not lost even when he goes squacking 

 about his daily business. Whatever he does or says he claims the 

 attention of the neighborhood, except when he has a secret to hide, 

 when he is as silent and wary as any wise parent. 



Like all great talkers the magpies are fond of company and where 

 one is seen others are usuallj^ within calling distance. Their notes 

 have a conversational tone and varied inflections and it seems small 

 wonder that they learn to talk when kept in confinement. 



They are keen observers and eager investigators of anything new 

 that does not appear dangerous. If a line of traps are set through 

 the sagebrush for small rodents and marked with bits ol cottoM on 

 bush tops, the cotton soon catches their eyes and is promptly inves- 

 tigated. If some of the traps have caught meadow mice they are 

 carried off to a convenient place, the mice eaten and the traps left — 

 sometimes causing a slight unpleasantness between magpie and 

 mammalogist. In cases where the birds are common they take up 

 the traps so systematically that the collector has to leave his line 

 unmarked or devise a method obscure enough to escape their keen 

 eyes. A flock of six or eight once came to examine into the blankets 

 of a naturalist sleeping on a haycock. Several of them lit on his head 

 and one was so absorbed in its explorations that the awakened col- 

 lector cauffht it in his hand. 



