Never Stop Learning - About Magpies!

So I learned something new about the first book in our collection: Buzzy and the Red Rock Canyons. The original illustration of a magpie was a yellow-billed magpie that are only found in California. I even lived in California for TWENTY years and NEVER saw a magpie, but they are only found, starting around northern Santa Barbara County. So I am pleased to present a slightly revised version of the magpie, a black-billed magpie that is found all over Utah where I live now.

"Black-billed Magpies live among the meadows, grasslands, and sagebrush plains of the West. Their nesting territories often follow stream courses. Though they like open areas and are not found in dense woods, they stay close to cover for protection from raptors."

"Black-billed magpies range in the north from coastal southern Alaska, central British Columbia, and the southern halves of Alberta, southern half of Yukon Territory, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and west through the Rocky Mountains down south to all the Rocky Mountain states including New Mexico, Colorado, UTAH, and Wyoming."

"The Yellow-billed Magpie lives only in California -- in an area about 500 miles from north to south and less than 150 miles wide."

And a cool fun fact found on Wikipedia: "Magpies are one of only four North American songbirds whose tail makes up half or more of the total body length (the others being the yellow-billed magpie, the scissor-tailed flycatcher, and the fork-tailed flycatcher)."

By the way, a lot of people don't particularly like magpies, but I do!! I love their magnificent tails!