The Yellow-billed Magpie 



spotted with buffy brown or citrine drab or grayish olive or deep grayish olive. Av. 

 of 195 eggs in the M. C. O. collections: 30.8 x 22.4 (1.22 x .88); index 72.1. Largest 

 egg, 37 x 23.4 (1.46 x .92); smallest, 26.7 x 20.3 (1.05 x .80). Season: first week in 

 April; one brood. 



Range (Wholly included in California). — California west of the Sierras, chiefly 

 in the Sacramento -San Joaquin Valley, and in the south central coastal counties; 

 from Tehama County (Anderson, Shasta County, July 4, 1916 — may possibly have 

 been semi-domesticated birds at liberty), south to northern Ventura County and Santa 

 Barbara County north of the Santa Ynez range (formerly to Santa Barbara, Santa 

 Paula, Simi, etc.), east to central Butte County, Clipper Gap, Placer County, and 

 Visalia in Tulare County, west to Mount St. Helena and the coast of Monterey County. 

 Range thus included within about 35 contiguous counties, undoubtedly more restricted 

 than formerly. 



Authorities. — Audubon (Corvits nuttallii), Birds of America (folio ed.), vol. 

 iv., 1836, pi. 362, fig. 1 (orig. descr. from Santa Barbara, Calif.) ; Gambel, Journ. Acad. 

 Nat. Sci. Phila., ser. 2, vol. i., 1847, pp. 46-47 (habits) ; Evermann, Amer. Nat., vol. xx., 

 1886, pp. 607-611 (habits; nesting) ; Bendire, Life Hist. N. Amer. Birds, vol. ii., 1895, 

 pp. 355-356, pi. in., fig. 14 (habits, nests and eggs); Noack, Condor, vol. iv., 1902, 

 pp. 78-79 (voice); Willett, Pac. Coast Avifauna, no. 7, 1912, p. 67 (status in s. Calif.); 

 Stone, Condor, vol. xviii., 1916, pp. 8-9 (history of discovery). 



IN ALL the world there are but two distinct types of Magpie, the 

 Black-billed and the Yellow-billed. The former is pretty well distributed 

 over the Northern Hemisphere, while the latter is confined to California. 

 We find California matching the world, therefore, in a situation which 

 invites special attention. Where did the Magpies come from? and how 

 did they get here? For both species have arrived in California. A 

 study of the distribution of the black-billed species, the Pica pica type, 

 quickly shows that its center of dispersal is north central Asia. Not 

 impossibly, the genus Pica had its origin in the north Himalayan region, 

 now emptied of its progeny, but which scientists assert to have been the 

 ancient cradle of the human race. For the occurrence of seven or eight 

 closely related subspecies at such extremes as Spain (melanonota) , nor- 

 thern Africa (mauritanica) , northern Europe {pica), northern Asia 

 (bactriana), China (sericea), and northwestern America (hudsonia), 

 clearly indicate a radial distribution. The American representative, 

 therefore, of the black-billed species, arrived by the way of the well- 

 known land-bridge which once connected Siberia and Alaska. But 

 when at last hudsonia reached California, it found Pica nuttalli anciently 

 entrenched, and it recoiled. How did nuttalli get here? Probably not 

 by the Bering land-bridge, at least not at the time of the latest estab- 

 lishment of that bridge; else its progress could still be traced by a series 

 of related forms. Two hypotheses only remain, both daring, and destitute 

 alike of actual foundation. Either nuttalli is an ur-ancient emigrant from 

 Asia, whose congeners were blotted out by the oncoming of the ice age, 



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