AMERICAN MAGPIE l4l 



At noon on May 22 this brood was seen at the same place. The birds 

 were closer to the ground and a little more scattered than they had been 

 the first time. When they moved they were a little more sure-footed. 

 One of them allowed me to approach within 10 feet before it flew. 



In the same vicinity, late in the afternoon of June 7, I watched about 

 25 magpies about a spring. They were in brush clumps and willows 

 and evidently were mostly young, representing 3 or 4 families. They 

 did not fly of? so quickly or so well as adults would have. Most of 

 them permitted approach to within a few feet, while adults at the same 

 time remained as shy as ever and kept well out of sight. When I ap- 

 proached them these young birds moved off in several directions 

 through the buffaloberry thickets. This was the earliest group noted 

 that season, which included more than one family. Judged from the 

 numbers of young seen, nearly all were then out of the nest and had 

 left their home surroundings. Magpie calls were heard much more 

 frequently than they had been early in May. 



Out of close to 50 nests examined in one season in Smoky Valley, 

 Nev., the birds at only three were so bold as to return to the nest, even 

 on repeated visits by persons, and to give alarm notes. Usually these 

 pairs kept close to the nest while it was being examined. At one nest 

 especially, which contained large young, the female would come within 

 3 or 4 feet of an intruder and, uttering alarm notes, would stay as long 

 as the person remained. The male came within 15 or 20 feet but did 

 not stay so long. At the time for the young to leave, the parent often 

 picked at branches of the buffaloberry bush on which it perched, break- 

 ing oflF thorns and pieces of bark with its beak. . x^ 



Plumages. — Nestling magpies have skins at first nearly free of color 

 except that which comes from the blood near the surface, and they have 

 no down. This evidently is an adaptation to the enclosed type of nest. 

 The skin soon assumes a yellow tinge and then becomes grayish as the 

 birds begin to fledge. When they leave the nest their tails are not 

 more than 5 inches long. 



Juvenal birds are much like the adults except for the loose texture 

 of the body feathers. The black parts of the body plumage are browner 

 and the white parts creamier, while the wings and tail are less brilliant. 

 The wing feathers and tail feathers and primary coverts of juvenal 

 magpies are not molted in the first autumn. The body feathers and 

 the wing coverts are molted. The young bird then has browner and 

 less glossy wings and tail than adults, and this distinction becomes 

 marked in the following spring and summer. 



Also, adults may be distinguished from young birds up to the time of 

 their second molt by differences in the form of the outer primary. The 



