Black-billed Magpie    Pica hudsonia

Migratory Status: Resident

PIF Population Estimate: 3 400 000

Percent of western hemisphere population breeding in boreal forest: <25%

BAM Effective Detection Radius (m) : 231.82

PIF Maximum Detection Distance (m) : 300

Canadian BBS Population trend: -0.1 n.s. (-1.1 to 0.8)

Life History

An extremely social and fearless bird, the Black-billed Magpie is a common resident of western North America in cool, shrub-steppe environments. This species is an opportunistic feeder with the ability to transmit new ‘learned’ behaviours to other flock members. This behaviour has contributed to the image of the Black-billed Magpie as a pest species , especially by farmers and trappers. Descendents of the Eurasian Black-billed Magpie, it is believed that Magpies arrived in the America’s during a glacial period via the Bering Straight.

Black-billed Magpies have a disjunct range (i.e., not continuous) in North America that is divided from north to south, yet no subspecies or geographical variation in appearance has been documented in this species. Their northern range encompasses parts of Alaska, north-western British Columbia and south-western Yukon. Their southern range includes central British Columbia eastward to western Ontario and southward east of the Cascades and Sierra Nevada ranges to Arizona.

Black-billed Magpies are a very conspicuous and well-know species: they live in open habitats (e.g. grasslands, sagebrush), are highly vocal, and having striking black-and-white plumage. Adult males and females look alike and are black overall with bright white on their shoulders and belly, as well as on their primary feathers creating a large white wing patch that is visible in flight. The tail feathers are long (longest in the centre) with a metallic blue-green sheen. Immature birds (i.e., less than two years old) can be distinguished from adults by their wing patch, which is smaller and extends into their secondary feathers.

Black-billed Magpies are omnivores and primarily forage on the ground. They will feed opportunistically on carrion, which makes up an important part of their diet, and will try to steal food from one other (called kleptoparasitism) or from other predators, such as raptors, coyotes, or foxes. Black-billed Magpies also cache (i.e., stockpile) food in many scattered locations, which they will retrieve one or two days later. Live ticks, which they glean off of large ungulates, are commonly cached for retrieval at a later date.

Reference(s)

Trost, C. H. 1999. Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonia), The Birds of North American Online, . A. Poole, Ed. Ithaca: Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology; Retrieved from The Birds of North America Online database: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/389

Underwood, T. J., S. G. Sealy, and C. M. McLaren. 2004. Experiments on egg discrimination in two North American corvids: further evidence for retention of egg rejection, Canadian Journal of Zoology, 82:1399-1407.