NigelJE
Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonia)
Best viewed large.
Lake Country, BC.
My first decent shot of a magpie. I know they are corvids, but this bill confirms it for me.
Also known as the American magpie.
The black-billed magpie is a bird in the crow family that inhabits the western half of North America, from southern coastal Alaska to northern California, northern Nevada, northern Arizona, northern New Mexico, central Kansas, and Nebraska. It is one of only four North American songbirds whose tail makes up half or more of the total body length (the others being the yellow-billed magpie, the scissor-tailed flycatcher, and the fork-tailed flycatcher).
The black-billed magpie is one of the few North American birds that build a domed nest.
Externally, The black-billed magpie is almost identical with the European magpie, Pica pica, and is considered conspecific by many sources. The American Ornithologists' Union, however, splits it as a separate species, Pica hudsonia, on the grounds that its mtDNA sequence is closer to that of California's yellow-billed magpie, Pica nuttalli, than to the European magpie.
It appears that after the ancestral magpie spread over Eurasia, the Korean population became isolated, at which point the species crossed the Bering Land Bridge and colonized North America, where the two American magpies then differentiated. Fossil evidence indicates that the ancestral North American magpie had arrived in its current range around the mid-Pliocene (3–4 mya) and that the yellow-billed magpie lineage split off rather soon thereafter due to the Sierra Nevada uplift and the beginning ice ages.
Corvids are considered the most intelligent of the birds, and among the most intelligent of all animals, having demonstrated self-awareness in mirror tests (European magpies) and tool-making ability (crows, rooks)—skills until recently regarded as solely the province of humans and a few other higher mammals. Their total brain-to-body mass ratio is equal to that of great apes and cetaceans, and only slightly lower than in humans.
Corvids are derived from Australasian ancestors and from there spread throughout the world.
Wikipedia.
Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonia)
Best viewed large.
Lake Country, BC.
My first decent shot of a magpie. I know they are corvids, but this bill confirms it for me.
Also known as the American magpie.
The black-billed magpie is a bird in the crow family that inhabits the western half of North America, from southern coastal Alaska to northern California, northern Nevada, northern Arizona, northern New Mexico, central Kansas, and Nebraska. It is one of only four North American songbirds whose tail makes up half or more of the total body length (the others being the yellow-billed magpie, the scissor-tailed flycatcher, and the fork-tailed flycatcher).
The black-billed magpie is one of the few North American birds that build a domed nest.
Externally, The black-billed magpie is almost identical with the European magpie, Pica pica, and is considered conspecific by many sources. The American Ornithologists' Union, however, splits it as a separate species, Pica hudsonia, on the grounds that its mtDNA sequence is closer to that of California's yellow-billed magpie, Pica nuttalli, than to the European magpie.
It appears that after the ancestral magpie spread over Eurasia, the Korean population became isolated, at which point the species crossed the Bering Land Bridge and colonized North America, where the two American magpies then differentiated. Fossil evidence indicates that the ancestral North American magpie had arrived in its current range around the mid-Pliocene (3–4 mya) and that the yellow-billed magpie lineage split off rather soon thereafter due to the Sierra Nevada uplift and the beginning ice ages.
Corvids are considered the most intelligent of the birds, and among the most intelligent of all animals, having demonstrated self-awareness in mirror tests (European magpies) and tool-making ability (crows, rooks)—skills until recently regarded as solely the province of humans and a few other higher mammals. Their total brain-to-body mass ratio is equal to that of great apes and cetaceans, and only slightly lower than in humans.
Corvids are derived from Australasian ancestors and from there spread throughout the world.
Wikipedia.