156 BULLETIN 191, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



the phylogenetic status of the magpies in southwestern Europe and 

 northern Africa. The anatomical, behavioral, and geographical situations 

 there are much like the ones encountered in California. The whole 

 question of relationships and trends of variation in the magpies is an 

 attractive one for the person who may be able to collect the pertinent 

 evidence. 



A feature common to situations inhabited by the yellow-billed magpie 

 is the presence of tall trees, usually in linear arrangement bordering 

 streams or in parklike groves, either on valley floors or on hills. An- 

 other is open ground either bare, as in well-kept orchards, or com- 

 prising cultivated fields or grassy pastures and slopes. This particular 

 kind of magpie appears not to extend its range into lands where there is 

 frequent high wind, long, snowy, and cold winters, or especially dry 

 and hot summers. The nature of the restriction in each case is more 

 or less obscure — sometimes, as with the strong wind, it is evidently 

 some direct influence of the environment upon the birds. Again, the 

 limitation may act indirectly by so reducing the available supply of food 

 that magpies could not exist for the whole year or for a time sufficient 

 to rear their young. Restrictions of water supply may be important 

 in preventing spread of these birds into desert regions. Water seems to 

 be necessary for the birds to drink and also as an aid to nest-building. 



Courtship. — Observations pertaining to courtship in the magpie are 

 hard to separate clearly from those concerned with competition and 

 with intolerance exhibited toward other individuals. Until the suitable 

 distinctions between these types of behavior can be made, it may be 

 better to consider all the observations made in the early part of the 

 breeding season, which appear to indicate special attention of one member 

 of a mated pair toward the other member. Also it may be permissible 

 to extend the scope of this topic to include examples of attention directed 

 toward other birds, even of other species, exhibited at this season. 



Observations made on the Frances Simes Hastings Natural History 

 Reservation, in Monterey County, Calif., where most of the material 

 contained in this account was obtained by numerous watchers, show 

 that activities connected with nesting begin early in fall. In one in- 

 stance a magpie in a morning early in October (3d) flew from a syca- 

 more into a locust, carrying a piece of sycamore bark 3 by 2 inches 

 in dimensions. It hopped about, eyeing four other magpies already in 

 the tree. After visiting three twig clusters such as provide nest sites, the 

 bird dropped the bark and paid no further attention to it as it fell to the 

 ground. The other birds ignored it also. One on October 31 was 

 carrying a 6-inch-long stick or root in its bill. This behavior was con- 

 sidered to he a sign of early nest-building. 



