Red-billed Blue Magpie

The red-billed blue magpie is a crow-family bird about the size of a Eurasian magpie but with one of the longest tails of any corvid, giving it a total length of 65 to 68 cm. Its head, neck and breast are black, the back and wings violet-blue, and the underparts greyish cream. The long tail is tipped broadly in white, and the bill, legs and eye-rings are bright orange-red. It ranges from the western Himalayas east through Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam to central and eastern China, in evergreen forest and scrub of hilly or mountainous country. It eats invertebrates, small animals, fruit and seeds, and robs nests of eggs and chicks.

About the red-billed blue magpie

The red-billed blue magpie is a long-tailed, violet-blue member of the crow family, Corvidae, found in forests and hills from the Himalayas to China and Southeast Asia. It is about the size of the Eurasian magpie but has a much longer tail, one of the longest of any corvid, plus a bright orange-red bill.

Its scientific name, Urocissa erythroryncha, describes it well. Urocissa joins the Ancient Greek words for "tail" and "magpie," and erythroryncha means "red bill." The French naturalist Buffon described the bird in 1775 from a specimen collected in China, and Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert gave it a scientific name in 1783. It is the type species of Urocissa, a genus of five Asian magpies that also includes the Taiwan blue magpie, yellow-billed blue magpie, white-winged magpie and Sri Lanka blue magpie.

The bird measures 65 to 68 cm (25.5 to 27 in) from bill to tail tip, yet weighs only 196 to 232 g (6.9 to 8.2 oz). Much of that length is tail. The tail is a bright violet-blue, like the main flight feathers of the wing, with a broad white tip.

The head, neck and breast are black, with bluish spotting on the crown. The shoulders and rump are a duller violet-blue, and the underparts are greyish cream. The bill, legs, feet and a ring of skin around each eye are bright orange-red, though in some birds across the range the red fades to nearly yellow.

Five subspecies are recognized, spread from northwest India to northeast China. They range from U. e. occipitalis of northwest India and Nepal to U. e. brevivexilla of northeast China.

Behavior and diet

Red-billed blue magpies forage both up in the trees and down on the ground. Like other corvids they eat a wide range of food: insects and other invertebrates, small animals, fruit and some seeds. They also raid other birds' nests, taking eggs and chicks.

They are noisy, varied callers. The most common calls are a grating rattle and a high, flute-like whistle, and they are accomplished mimics of other sounds.

Magpies as a group are widely considered intelligent. A 2008 study suggested the Eurasian magpie, a black-and-white relative, can recognize itself in a mirror, though later research could not repeat the result. Magpies have also been recorded making and using tools, imitating human speech, playing and working in teams. Those studies were not of this species, but they show what the family is capable of. Corvids as a whole are among the most intelligent birds studied, with a brain-to-body mass ratio equal to that of non-human great apes and whales and dolphins.

Red-billed blue magpies nest in trees and large shrubs, building a relatively shallow nest. The female usually lays three to five eggs. Across the crow family, pair bonds are strong and sometimes lifelong, both partners usually build the nest together, and the male feeds the female while she incubates.

Range and habitat

The red-billed blue magpie covers a broad band of southern and eastern Asia. Its range starts in the western Himalayas and northern India and runs east into Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, then through central and eastern China as far as southwest Manchuria. The type specimen's location was fixed as Canton (Guangzhou) in China.

Its natural home is evergreen forest and scrub, mostly in hilly or mountainous country. The species has also adapted to cities and can be seen in large Chinese cities such as Beijing and Hong Kong.

That places it in one of the crow family's strongholds. Corvids live almost everywhere except the southern tip of South America and the polar ice caps, but most of the family's roughly 135 species are found in tropical Central and South America and in southern Asia.

Red-billed blue magpie vs Eurasian magpie

Both are true magpies in the crow family, but they belong to different branches. Studies suggest the long-tailed corvids called magpies are not one natural group: black-and-white Holarctic magpies form one lineage, and a separate one contains the vividly colored blue and green magpies of South and East Asia, such as this species. The azure-winged magpie is another Asian magpie, in its own genus, Cyanopica.

Conservation status

The red-billed blue magpie is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (BirdLife International, 2018). It has a very large range across southern and eastern Asia and has adapted to living in cities. Across the crow family as a whole, most corvids are not threatened, and many are increasing alongside human activity, though the destruction of Southeast Asian rainforest is endangering mixed-species feeding flocks that include members of the crow family.

In East Asian cultures, magpies in general are popular birds and symbols of good luck. In Chinese folklore, magpies fly up to the Milky Way each year at the Qixi Festival to form a bridge so the separated Cowherd and Weaver Girl can meet. Magpies are a common subject of Chinese painting and poetry. Like the American crow and common raven, they belong to a family known for intelligence.