150 BULLETIN 191, UNITED Sl'ATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The bird was considered a great pest in those times on account of its habit of 

 alighting on horses, with saddle or harness galls, and persistently pecking at the 

 sores until the death of the animal resulted. The only means of saving the horses 

 when thus attacked was to stable or blanket them. With the extinction of the 

 buffalo, the magpies disappeared and the present incursion is the first which has 

 occurred since that time. [The buffalo was plentiful in that district until 1875.] 



Skinner (MS.) reports from the Yellowstone region that magpies fre- 

 quently linger about horses, elk, and buffalo for the sake of the manure. 

 He has seen them feed on carcasses of those animals, which they attacked 

 first by picking out the eyes, next the eyelids and lips, and then the neck. 



Magpies are partly dependent too for food on another group of mam- 

 mals, the carnivores, but in a different way. These birds seem to know 

 that a c.arnivore is likely to leave scraps of food, and they are able to 

 take advantage of the circumstance. My attention once was directed 

 to the location of a coyote in an aspen thicket by the commotion of 

 magpies near it. Skinner (MS.) writes that magpies find coyote kills 

 so promptly that he sometimes thinks they follow coyotes purposely. 



An account supplied by A. A. Saunders tells how he once watched 

 a pair of magpies sc.old a cat. The cat was trying to hide in a thick 

 growth of willow and cottonwood, but the magpies followed it about, 

 alighting a few feet above it, and calling. The cat would try to move 

 on to another spot, only to be discovered there also, and its presence an- 

 nounced derisively to all the bird population. 



Voice. — The ordinary call note of the black-billed magpie has been 

 written (Bendire, 1895) as a querulous cdck, click, or chiieck, chdeck, 

 uttered in a high key, and disagreeable to the ear. That writer adds that : 

 "It frequently utters also a low, garrulous gabble, intermixed with 

 whistling notes, not at all unpleasing, as if talking to itself, and if 

 annoyed at anything it does not hesitate to show its displeasure by 

 scolding in the most unmistakable manner." The distinct chatter of the 

 usual notes impressed Ridgway (1877) as being unlike the notes of any 

 other bird of his acquaintance. The more musical note, which he heard 

 uttered frequently, sounded like kay e-ehk-kay. He could detect no 

 difference between the notes of this bird and those of the yellow-billed 

 kind. 



Brooks (1931) writes that during four years in France he "was sur- 

 prised to note the great difference in voice between the Old and New 

 World Magpies ; the latter to his regret have no call that he can imitate 

 sufficiently well to decoy the birds to him ; the former on the other 

 hand had two easily imitated calls and decoyed readily." 



Saunders (MS.) notes that the common cackling call sounds to him 

 like ca-ca-ca-ca-ca. It is in a harsh, cracked voice, higher pitched than 

 a crow's caw. When one is near the nest and the birds are sc.olding with 



