The birds of “Discovery”—Black-billed Magpie

This is the second in a series of posts focused on the birds featured in my new novel, Discovery. Look for another one each week.

Like teenagers on prom night, Black-billed Magpies can be loud, boisterous and unruly. But, unlike said teenagers, both male and female magpies are always dressed to the nines. (Quick side note: Nobody knows why “dressed to the nines” means somebody is in perfect style. One guess is that it has to do with tailors needing nine yards of cloth to make a really nice suit. Maybe that’s where the phrase “the whole nine yards” comes from, too.)

Anyway, back to magpies. As the photo above shows, they are beautiful birds — not just because of their stunning black and white plumage, but also because of the blue to greenish blue sheen that shows in the right light. These birds live year-round throughout a large range in the western U.S., nearly to the Pacific coast. In California, the Yellow-billed Magpie occupies a limited area along the central coast and, to the north, somewhat inland.

I’ve mentioned that magpies tend to be loud and boisterous. They like to get together in groups, again like teenagers, and squawk about whatever magpies have to squawk about. It’s no surprise that they’re members of the family Corvidae, which includes jays, crows and ravens. All the species in this family are considered songbirds for some reason, even though they couldn’t carry a tune in a dump truck. (Another quick side note: The idiom is usually “can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” but that seems a little too little to illustrate the situation fairly.)

In flight, magpies look a little like a swimmer doing the butterfly stroke, but it’s hard to pay attention to the mechanics of the motion with all that magnificent black-and-white plumage flashing by. It’s been said that magpies strut when they’re on the ground, as if they know full well how beautiful they are. Of course, that’s ridiculous. They strut because they’ve got the good life figured out. For example, they don’t limit their diet to a few kinds of seeds or small, defenseless animals. Instead, they eat just about anything, from grain to bugs to rotting carcasses. And they act like they enjoy it. They make lots of raucous noise. They flap those wonderful wings in joy. And, when they walk, they strut like they really are beautiful geniuses.

If I seem down on magpies, I’m not. I admire them greatly. Like their fellow corvids — the crows, ravens and jays — they’re smart. Like most jays, they’re handsome. Like cockroaches and rats, they’re able to adapt and thrive. And, frankly, I’d rather see kitchens and alleys infested with magpies.