Azure-winged magpie

Scientific name:Cyanopica cyana

Continent: Europe, Asia

Country: Spain, Portugal, China, Korea, Japan

Diet: Insects - insectivore, fruits - frugivore, seeds - granivore, small vertebrates.

Food & feeding: Omnivore

Habitats: Temperate forest and woodland, temperate grassland

Conservation status: Not threatened

Relatives: Crow, European magpie

Description: These beautiful magpies have long light-blue tails and wings, grey backs, white throats and a black cap on the top of their head. They are about 35 cm long and weigh 5 grams.

Lifestyle: These attractive birds roam around their native forests in small groups, looking out for their favourite foods. Their all-purpose beaks are able to make a meal of almost anything. They are active during the daytime.

Family & friends: These magpies live and nest in groups - nests are often found in neighbouring trees - and occasionally a bird within the colony may help another pair raise their chicks. Once the chicks have fledged, the family groups merge and the whole group forages together.

Keeping in touch: They have a variety of calls - piping whistles and trills, plus a loud note uttered over and over, as the flock moves through the forest.

Growing up: Azure-winged magpies lay up to nine eggs in a clutch and the eggs are incubated for 15 days before hatching. As only one egg is laid each day and the adults begin incubating as soon as the first egg is laid, there can be a gap of a week or more between the hatch dates of the chicks. This means there may be one chick that has just hatched, weighing only a few grams and one with pin feathers already emerging with 5 or 6 others in-between. They fledge two weeks after hatching.

This species is found in the wild in Spain, Portugal and the Far East (China, Korea and Japan), but it is not found anywhere in-between. How could this happen? Perhaps magpies lived all over Europe and Asia and died out over time, leaving only these two separated populations today. What actually happened is a mystery that puzzles biologists who study biogeography, the study of where animals live.

Conservation news: There are around 300,000 pairs of these magpies in Europe, plus many more in eastern Asia. They are not currently threatened.

Bristol Zoo Gardens has bred many of these birds. Adult birds sometimes push the chicks out of the nest, so up to half of the newly-hatched chicks have been hand-reared to prevent this happening. As a result, 10 chicks were reared in the year 2000, five by the adults and five by the keepers. These birds have now been distributed to other animal collections to make new breeding groups.