Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica): Facts, Intelligence and Myths

Appearance: black, white and iridescent

From a distance a magpie looks simply black and white. The head, neck, breast, back and vent are black, while the belly and a large patch on each shoulder (the scapulars) are bright white. In flight, the white inner webs of the primary feathers show as a pale panel on each rounded wing.

Up close, the “black” feathers are anything but plain. The wings shine with blue, purple and green, and the long tail flashes metallic green, bronze and reddish purple in sunlight. This shimmer is iridescence: it comes from the microscopic structure of the feathers, not from pigment, so the colors change with the angle of the light.

The bill and legs are black and the eye is dark brown. Males and females look the same, although males are a little larger. Young magpies in their first summer have a shorter tail, duller feathers with less gloss and, at first, a pinkish patch at the base of the bill.

Magpies are also easy to recognize by sound. The usual call is a loud, harsh chatter, often written “chak-chak-chak”, which they use to raise the alarm or mob a cat, fox or bird of prey.

How big is a magpie?

The Eurasian magpie is a medium-sized corvid, roughly the size of a jackdaw in body but much longer because of its tail. The graduated tail, with the middle feathers longest, makes up more than half of the bird’s total length.

These figures are for the European subspecies. Magpies across the huge range vary a little in size, in the amount of white in the wings and rump, and in the color of the gloss.

Habitat and range

The Eurasian magpie lives across temperate Europe and Asia, from Ireland, Britain and Portugal in the west to the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East. It is absent from the high Arctic and from the driest deserts. Most magpies are residents that stay on or near their territory all year; only birds at the northern edge of the range in Scandinavia and Russia move south in hard winters.

Magpies like open country with scattered trees and bushes. Farmland with hedgerows, grassland edges, open woodland, parks, cemeteries and gardens all suit them, while dense forest and completely treeless land do not. In many parts of Europe, magpies have moved into towns and cities since the mid-20th century and now breed at high densities in suburbs. In Scandinavia they are so closely tied to people that they are rarely found far from houses.

One magpie or several?

Scientists used to treat almost all the world’s black-and-white magpies as one species. The North American black-billed magpie (Pica hudsonia) was split off in 2000, after studies of its calls, behavior and genetics. More recent DNA work has split several Asian and African populations as well, including the Oriental magpie (Pica serica) of eastern China, Korea and Taiwan, the Maghreb magpie of North Africa and the Asir magpie of southwestern Arabia. The Eurasian magpie in the narrow sense is the bird of Europe, Central Asia and Siberia.

Diet: what do magpies eat?

Magpies are true omnivores and opportunists. On the ground they walk or hop briskly, probing grass and soil for beetles, leatherjackets (crane fly larvae), caterpillars, earthworms, spiders and other invertebrates, which make up much of their food in spring and summer.

They also eat small mammals such as voles, lizards, carrion including road kill, grain, seeds, acorns, berries and fruit, and food scraps from bins, bird tables and picnic sites. In spring, magpies take eggs and nestlings of other birds. This habit makes them unpopular with some gardeners, but long-term studies of British bird-survey data have found no evidence that magpies cause songbird populations to decline overall.

Like many corvids, magpies hide surplus food in small caches in the ground or in crevices and return to it later, sometimes after days. They watch other birds closely and may move a cache if they notice a rival watching them hide it.

Intelligence

The Eurasian magpie is widely regarded as one of the most intelligent birds. Its forebrain is large for its body size, comparable in relative terms to the brains of great apes. In laboratory tests magpies solve problems, remember the locations of hidden food and track objects that are moved out of sight.

In 2008, a German research team reported that Eurasian magpies passed the mirror mark test, a classic test of self-recognition, making them the first non-mammals said to do so. A larger replication published in 2020 did not find the same result, so the question remains open. The full story is in can magpies recognize themselves in a mirror?

Magpies are also known for their social behavior. They have been seen gathering noisily around a dead magpie, they mob predators in noisy groups, and juveniles form loose flocks that roam between territories until they can claim one of their own. Their close relatives, the crows, show many of the same abilities, as explained in how smart are crows and ravens?

Nests, breeding and life cycle

Magpie pairs are monogamous and often stay together on the same territory year after year. In late winter and early spring the male displays by raising and lowering his head feathers, fanning his long tail and showing off his white shoulder patches.

The nest is one of the most distinctive in Europe. Both partners build a large, untidy ball of sticks, usually high in a tall tree or in a thick thorny bush. The cup is cemented with mud and lined with fine roots and hair, and above it is a dome of prickly twigs with a side entrance that protects eggs and chicks from crows and other predators. In 2023, researchers described magpie nests in Belgium and the Netherlands built partly from metal anti-bird spikes, one of them containing about 1,500 spikes.

In Europe the female usually lays 5–6 eggs in April, though clutches of 3–10 are known. The eggs are pale blue-green with olive-brown speckles. She incubates them for about 21–22 days while the male brings her food. The chicks hatch naked and blind, and both parents feed them. They leave the nest at about 27 days old but are fed and guarded for several more weeks. Only one brood is raised each year.

Many chicks die of starvation, because the eggs hatch over several days and the youngest nestlings lose out when food is short. Some young magpies breed after one year; others spend another year in a non-breeding flock.

Lifespan

Life is short for most magpies. A well-known long-term study of color-ringed magpies near Sheffield, England, found that only about 22% of fledglings survived their first year. Adults then had a yearly survival rate of about 69%, giving the survivors an average lifespan of just under four years.

A few magpies live much longer. The oldest known wild Eurasian magpie was a bird ringed in England that lived more than 21 years.

Predators and threats

Adult magpies are taken by goshawks, sparrowhawks (mainly young birds), peregrine falcons, eagle owls, foxes and domestic cats. Crows, jays and squirrels raid nests, which is one reason magpies build domed nests.

People have persecuted magpies for centuries because they take gamebird eggs and songbird nestlings. Today they are legally controlled in some countries under licence, yet the species remains abundant and has spread into towns where it is safer than in the countryside.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List classes the Eurasian magpie as Least Concern. It has an enormous range, and BirdLife International estimates roughly 7.5–19 million breeding pairs in Europe alone. European populations have been broadly stable since 1980, and urban populations increased strongly in the late 20th century.

Myths and facts

Myth: magpies steal jewelry and shiny objects. This old idea inspired Rossini’s opera La gazza ladra (“The Thieving Magpie”) and the Tintin story The Castafiore Emerald, but a 2014 study at the University of Exeter found wild magpies were wary of shiny things rather than attracted to them. See do magpies steal shiny things?

Myth: magpies are related to the Australian magpie. The Australian magpie belongs to a different family, the butcherbirds. It was named after the European bird only because of its black-and-white plumage.

Myth: one magpie brings bad luck. This is a superstition, not a fact about the bird. Magpie pairs often feed apart, so seeing a lone bird is perfectly normal. The custom of greeting a single magpie is explained in why do people salute magpies?

Relationship with people

Few birds have such a mixed reputation. In British and Irish folklore the magpie is an omen, counted in the rhyme “One for sorrow, two for joy”, and in parts of Europe it has been linked with thieving, witchcraft and bad news. The name itself comes from “Mag”, a short form of Margaret, added to “pie”, the old name for the bird, from the Latin pica.

In East Asia, by contrast, the closely related Oriental magpie is a bird of good fortune. In China it is the “bird of joy”, and in Korea it is said to bring good news and visitors.

For birdwatchers, the magpie is one of the easiest birds to watch closely: a clever, confident neighbor that shows a surprising range of behavior in any park or garden.