The Introduction Article is just the first of 11 articles in each species account that provide life history information for the species. The remaining articles provide detailed information regarding distribution, migration, habitat, diet, sounds, behavior, breeding, current population status and conservation. Each species account also includes a multimedia section that displays the latest photos, audio selections and videos from Macaulay Library’s extensive galleries. Written and continually updated by acknowledged experts on each species, Birds of North America accounts include a comprehensive bibliography of published research on the species.
A subscription is needed to access the remaining account articles and multimedia content. Rates start at $5 USD for 30 days of complete access.
Adult Yellow-billed Magpie, Pleasant Grove, CA, February.
Note the glossy iridescent uniform greater coverts indicative of an adult. The following link is to this contributor's Flickr stream or website. http://www.flickr.com/photos/13893766@N00/, Feb 28, 2007; photographer Donald Metzner
One of the few truly endemic bird species of California, the Yellow-billed Magpie is a conspicuous resident of open oak woodlands. Found primarily in the Central Valley, the southern Coast Ranges, and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, this bird generally nests in loose colonies of 3 to 30 pairs, although some nest solitarily. Its large, domed stick nests are conspicuous features of nesting colonies.
Although this magpie has been the subject of several detailed studies of social behavior and ecology, gaps remain in our knowledge of its dispersal, vocal communication, development, evolutionary history, systematics, and relationships to the closely related Black-billed Magpie, now divided into polytypic Palearctic (Pica pica) and monotypic North American (P. hudsonia) forms. The Yellow-billed Magpie and North American Black-billed Magpie are more similar in vocalizations and social behavior than either is to Eurasian subspecies of Magpie. Coues (
Coues, E. 1903. Key to North American bird. Boston, MA: Dana Estes Co.
Coues 1903) suggested that the persistence of the yellow-billed form in California was a “perpetuated accident.”
This species was named by John James Audubon in 1837 (as Corvus nutalli, [later nuttalli]) in honor of ornithologist Thomas Nuttall, who collected specimens near Santa Barbara, California.
Much of our knowledge concerning the behavior of this species comes from studies done at Hastings Reservation in central coastal California by Nicolas Verbeek (
Verbeek, N. A. M. 1972a. Comparison of displays of the Yellow-billed Magpie (Pica nuttalli) and other corvids. J. Ornithol. no. 113:295-313.
Verbeek 1972a,
Verbeek, N. A. M. 1972b. Daily and annual time budget of the Yellow-billed Magpie. Auk no. 89:567-582.
Verbeek 1972b,
Verbeek, N. A. M. 1973b. The exploitation system of the Yellow-billed Magpie. Univ. Calf. Publ. Zool. no. 99:1-58.
Verbeek 1973b), Mark Reynolds (
Reynolds, M. D. 1990. The ecology of spacing behavior in the Yellow-billed Magpie Pica nuttalli. Phd Thesis, Univ. of California, Berkeley.
Reynolds 1990), and Ginger Bolen (1991,
Bolen, G. M., S. I. Rothstein and C. H. Trost. 2000. Egg recognition in Yellow-billed and Black-billed Magpies in the absence of interspecific parasitism: Implications for parasite-host coevolution. Condor no. 102 (2):432-438.
Bolen et al. 2000). Currently there is considerable conservation concern about this species related to its vulnerability to West Nile virus (
Crosbie, S. P., W. D. Koenig, W. K. Reisem, V. L. Kramer, L. Marcus, R. Carney, E. Pandolfino, G. M. Bolen, L. R. Crosbie, D. A. Bell and H. B. Ernest. 2008. Early impact of West Nile virus on the Yellow-billed Magpie (Pica nuttalli). Auk no. 125 (3):542-550.
Crosbie et al. 2008).
Recommended Citation
Koenig, W. D. and M. D. Reynolds (2009). Yellow-billed Magpie (Pica nuttalli), version 2.0. In The Birds of North America (A. F. Poole, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bna.180