Australian magpie

The Australian magpie is a medium-sized black and white passerine bird. It is native to Australia and southern New Guinea and has nine recognised subspecies. The male and female are similar in appearance, and can be distinguished by differences in back markings. Over 1000 Australian magpies were introduced into New Zealand from 1864 to 1874.

About Australian magpie in brief

The Australian magpie is a medium-sized black and white passerine bird. It is native to Australia and southern New Guinea and has nine recognised subspecies. The male and female are similar in appearance, and can be distinguished by differences in back markings. Over 1000 Australian magpies were introduced into New Zealand from 1864 to 1874 but have subsequently been accused of displacing native birds and are now treated as a pest species. The magpie has an array of complex vocalisations and is omnivorous, with the bulk of its varied diet made up of invertebrates. It has adapted well to human habitation and is a familiar bird of parks, gardens and farmland in Australia and New Guinea. In spring, a small minority of breeding mag pies can become aggressive, swooping and attacking those who approach their nests. The Australian Magpie is the mascot of several Australian sporting teams, most notably the Collingwood Magpies, the Western Suburbs Mag pies and, in New Zealand, the Hawke’s Bay Magpie. The bird was first described by English ornithologist John Latham in 1801 as Coracias tibicen, the type collected in the Port Jackson region. Its specific epithet derived from the Latin tibi, which means ‘flute-player’ or ‘piper’ in reference to the bird’s melodious call.

It was named for its similarity in colouration to the European magpie; it was a common practice for early settlers to name plants and animals after European counterparts. In Western Australia it is known as warndurla among the Yindjibarndi people of the central and western Pilbara, and koorlbardi amongst the south west Noongar peoples. Among the Kamilaroi, it is burrugaabu, galalu, or guluu. In New Zealand the birds are not considered an invasive species, where they have been introduced in the Solomon Islands and Fiji. The genus Gymnorhina was introduced by the English zoologist George Gray in 1840. The name is from the Ancient Greek gumnaked or rhumnaked, for rhnaked rhinoceros, or rhode rhino, and gumnak, or gumnack. The species is placed in its own monotypic genus, Cracticus, which is monosyllabic and monotyped with the clade of clade clade birds, the butcherbirds, and the woodswallows and woodpeckers. The Australian magpie’s inin and currawbirds were recognised on and the three were placed in the family Cracticini in 1914 by John Albert Leach after he studied the musculature of the musculli. However, in 1985, American ornithologists recognised the close relationship between woodswallow and butcherbirds and combined them into a Cracticus genera.

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