Blue Magpie

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[IA8IT]

1. Blue Magpies are real

[Rebl2]

2. Are these

different from blue jays?

[WhiteTara]

3. looks like a commom jay to me.

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4. Agreed.

Nice photo, but misidentified.

[WhiteTara]

5. Perhaps the person looking at this bird is

from the west coast and the jays there are so spectacular that they couldn't imagine a blue jay without the crest?

[Rebl2]

6. Think

CA have Steller jays?

[WhiteTara]

7. Yes, they have beautiful crests.

[ShazzieB]

8. Yes, Steller's jays have much bigger crests than the blue jays do.

This definitely looks like a blue jay, with the crest flattened back.

Jays and magpies have a lot in common, being in different branches of the Corvid family, but there aren't any magpies that look this much like a blue jay, at least not to my knowledge.

[WhiteTara]

9. sadly, I don't think I've ever seen a magpie.

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10. Black billed magpie

[WhiteTara]

11. wow! So beautiful

do they live around northwest Arkansas?

[ShazzieB]

12. I never saw one until my husband and I took a trip out west a few years ago.

We're from Illinois, and we took a trip through South Dakota, Wyoming (including Yellowstone), and Montana, and then back home through Colorado and Nebraska. In Montana, I started noticing these big black and white birds all over the place. Like these guys:



I googled and found out they were black-billed magpies, a bird that is common west of the Mississippi but not seen in the eastern third of the country.

[WhiteTara]

13. thanks and I'll bet it was thrilling to see

such flocks were everywhere.