How Do Magpies Work?

Behavior of Black build and Yellow build Magpies. Birkehead has studied both species in the field in Europe and the United States, and notes that people who deal with magpies on a regular basis have a keen understanding of how smart they are. He said, every gamekeeper will tell you how clever magpies are avoiding people carrying a gun as if they know. Magpies most impressive trait is knowing themselves in a mirror. A very few animals can do this.

Magpies can also be taught to speak. They hide food food and can relocate hidden food with incredible accuracy. Intelligence wise, magpies are very much like their fellow corvids, Jay's rooks, ravens, and crows. Hastaf Works also spoke with Walter Kunik, a senior scientist with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Kunig has studied magpies in the past and is currently studying the social behavior of acorn woodpeckers and patterns of acorn production

in California Oaks in the Carmel Valley of California. It also happens to be the only place in the world where yellow build magpies live. The yellow build variety is a year round sociable bird. They nest in pairs by the dozens, fairly close to each other within hundreds of yards. In one colony Kunig and other researchers studied, they found fifteen to twenty nests in one canyon. He said, we

referred to yellow build magpies as semi colonial. They make big, domed stick nests with entrances on the sides that can be a couple of feet across. The nests sometimes end up in mistletoe clumps, which makes them hard to find. Sometimes. Both yellow and black billed magpies are monogamous and mate for life. Magpipe hairs build their nest together. The male gathering sticks for the exterior, while the female works on

the interior, lining it with mudding grass. The female lays a clutch of eggs, the number varies according to species, usually one brood per year. Their plumage is eye catching, black and white overall, with black and blue green. Ear doesn't flashes on their wings and tail. Their wings are short, but their tails are long as long or slightly longer than the rest of their bodies. Their bills are strongly pronounced like a crow's, and true to their name, either

yellow or black. They're typically seventeen inches long that's forty to sixty centimeters and weigh five to seven pounds that's two to three kilos, with an average wingspan around twenty three inches or fifty eight centimeters. Magpies are what scientists call opportunistic eaters. In other words, you might see a magpie eating carrion, but it probably makes up only a small amount of their diet. Kunnig said they're mostly out there foraging among the grass, eating insects and other stuff

they can find, but they will eat small mammals. Magpies do have a couple of unique behaviors of note. Kunnig said, they're one of the few animals that are known to have funerals. Nobody really knows what's going on, but when magpies find even parts of a dead magpie lying around because it got eaten or died, a bunch will come together and start squawking. They recognize this dead bird is one of their own, and it sends them into this tizzy.

They're obviously doing something. The general consensus is that they're social enough that when they see a dead magpie they want to know who it is, how it affects them, and how it affects the social stratification of the group. Another notable behavior is what Birkhead called testing the locks, a sort of ceremonial gathering in the spring. He explained it as noisy clusters of up to twenty magpies and

the trees, chasing and calling. Our research showed that these are triggered by dominant members of the non breeding flock invading the territory of established pairs. Essentially, they're testing the locks. Could I break in and take over if I push hard enough. This is how some young magpies get territories

and how some old ones lose theirs. Some legends and stories from folk tales to nursery rhymes have demonized magpies as birds that swoop into steal shiny objects, or are harbingers of doom, but Burkehead said that's probably just a

combination of bad press and familiarity breeding contempt. He said, if magpies were rare, everyone would rave about their stunning white and black ear doescn't plumage their blong tail and perky manner, and they've become more common in the UK in the last fifty to sixty years, and anything common can be perceived as a pest. Magpies take songbird eggs and nestlings, and understandably people hate them for this, but sparrowhawks take many more, but do so invisibly so are

less maligned, and domestic cats take many more. Still, the increase in magpies coincided with the general decrease in songbirds, and people put two and two together and made ten. Our research revealed no casual link between the two. Magpies do take songbird eggs and chicks, but so do lots of other predators, and small birds have evolved to cope

with this and produce replacement clutches. Today's episode is based on the article why you should love the much maligned Magpie on how stuff works dot Com written by Patty Rescuesen. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where every listening to your favorite shows. M