How Do Magpies Work?

Magpies, though sometimes maligned, are fascinating birds that can recognize themselves in mirrors and have funerary practices. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/birds/magpie.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Hey brain Stuff. Lauren volgebon here it's a probable bet
that the person who coined the term bird brain never
dealt with a magpie. For the article. This episode is
based on hos to work. Spoke by email with Tim Burkehead,
Emeritus Professor of Zoology in the Department of Animal and

(00:23):
Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, Great Britain. He's
the author of the book The Magpies, The Ecology and
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

(00:45):
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,

(01:06):
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

(01:29):
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

(01:51):
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

(02:14):
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,

(02:36):
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

(02:57):
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

(03:20):
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

(03:40):
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,

(04:01):
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

(04:22):
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

(04:43):
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

(05:05):
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

(05:29):
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.

(05:50):
Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio in partnership with
how stuff works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Clang.
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