Yellow-billed Magpie

Identificazione

The yellow-billed magpie (Pica nuttallii), also known as the California magpie, is a bird that is endemic to California's Central Valley and the adjacent chaparral foothills and mountains. Apart from its having a yellow bill and a yellow streak around the eye and being slightly smaller, it is virtually identical to the black-billed magpie (Pica hudsonia) found in much of the rest of western North America. The scientific name commemorates the English naturalist Thomas Nuttall.

Tassonomia

mtDNA sequence analysis indicates a close relationship between the yellow-billed magpie and the black-billed magpie, rather than between the outwardly very similar black-billed and European magpies (P. pica).<p>The Korean subspecies of the European magpie (P. p. sericea) is more distantly related to all other (including North American) forms judging from the molecular evidence, and thus, either the North American forms are maintained as specifically distinct. The Korean (and possibly related) subspecies are also elevated to species status, or all magpies are considered to be subspecies of a single species, Pica pica.<p>Combining fossil evidence and paleobiogeographical considerations with the molecular data indicates that the yellow-billed magpie's ancestors became isolated in California quite soon after the ancestral magpies colonized North America due to early ice ages and the ongoing uplift of the Sierra Nevada, but that during interglacials there occurred some gene flow between the yellow- and black-billed magpies until reproductive isolation was fully achieved in the Pleistocene.<p>The yellow-billed magpie is adapted to the hot summers of California's Central Valley and experiences less heat stress than the black-billed magpie.

Nome scientifico

Pica nuttalli

Autorità

(Audubon, 1837)

Ordine

Passeriformi

Famiglia

Corvidi

Genere

Pica

Areale e habitat

Migrazione

Specie stanziale

Comportamento

Comportamento migratorio: Specie stanziale.

Conservazione

Tendenza della popolazione: in diminuzione.

Tendenza della popolazione

in diminuzione