Original YT playout date: 3 March 2009
Duration: 14:18
The rooks come home to rest, and I take my kids to their horse therapy. Later on we see our balcony snowman and discuss how the comments of a few morons led to my needing to take down a successful film. Between these morons on the one hand and morons like Warners on the other, I am losing material these days almost as fast as I can put it up. Continue reading “The rooks, the horse, the cat and the snowman”→
Original YT playout date: 10 February 2009
Duration: 39:12
“I can’t belive you you film this, let alone make other people watch it afterwards, REDICULOUS!” wrote one commentator. Nevertheless, I am enjoying watching it afterwards, as it has my parents on and little Sophie’s voice, which otherwise would be lost for ever as my parents are gone, zichro baruch, Sophie hi gdolah achshav, and this will never happen again. So even if someone doesn’t like it, I don’t really care too much. I like it. Yeah, it’s a pity that the video cam is blurred, but that’s what I had. Some people see the world like that anyway, because they don’t realise that they need glasses. Just as some commentators comment like that because they don’t realise they need more brains. Continue reading “Sika deer in Ashridge”→
My delay in getting through the series of nineteen Corvidae members, also known as “the Corvid 19” is only dragging out the pandemic as initially it was supposed to be one a week, but there was also supposed to be vaccine by now so I am not the only one with a delay on their hands.
Today, however, we move to one of the best known and most iconic Corvids, the unmistakable Eurasian magpie. And we are going to be finding out some little-known facts about this well-known bird, including the fact that the name is actually highly sexist and chauvinistic, if you get into the etymology of it.
As usual the information is being put together in a table for so as to allow an easier summary at the end of the series. I am still thinking about publishing a fine “Corvid 19” wall chart in time for the end of the pandemic.
And if there is a second wave, I may need to do a Cervid-19 also, but I will pay deerly for such a project.
Common Name
Magpie
Other names
Pie (the original name, see below)
German
Elster
French
Pie bavarde
Russian
Соро́ка
Polish
Sroka zwyczajna
Scientific Name
Pica pica
Number of species in the genus
7
Number of subspecies in this species
6
Literal meaning of Scientific name
“Pica” is the Latin name of the Eurasian magpie, as attested in Latin literature. Greek has Karakaxa, which could have been selected, but wasn’t.
Described by
Linnaeus 1758, but as Corvus Pica. The genus Pica was later posited by Mathurin Jacques in 1760. Previously Conrad Gessner had described the magpie in his 1555 work Historia animalium, a classic f renaissance zoology, but not in the binomial system, which it predates.
First attested in literature
Well before Gessner there are mentions of magpies in the classical literature. It is part of the folklore of many countries and is the only one of the Corvid 19 to have had an opera written about it, La gazza ladra, the Thieving Magpie, by Rossini.
Wingspan (cm)
62
Length bill to tail (cm)
46 (long tail, half the length of the bird)
Distribution
The species covers all of Europe and most of Asia in a band across Russia below the permafrost, except in Kamchatka, shich has its own subspecies. In total there are 6 subspecies, and these differ little between themselves
Remarks
The magpie is consider the most intelligent bird given that it alone among the birds passes the “Mirror test” for self-recognition. It is known for its iconic black and white markings which gave rise to the term “pied” for other similar markings, like the pied wagtail of Hamelin. The actual term was just “pies” which the “mag” term from ‘Maggie Thatcher” referred to the resenblance of the vocalisations to those of a nagging woman. It is reather a chauvinistic name and this as well as being both black and white are likley to make this species endangered in a leftist world like this is, where sense is ended before it’s begun.
Migrations
Only minor within the range of subspecies.
Sexual dimorphism
Barely noticeable
Close relatives
There are five other species in the Genus Pica, of which the Hudson magpie is very similar and also regarded as a spirit animal as the Eurasian one in ancient Germanic mythology, by the First Nations people. The yellow billed magpie and the Maghreb magpie are noticeably different, other than that, there is little to notice as difference between the species in the genus.
Not close relatives thought to be close
Other birds called green magpies, one of which we looked at earlier, are not distant relatives. The treepies as well, such as the black magpie we will be looking at next time, are all also corvids. The Australian magpie, on the other hand, is a completely unrelated bird and not a Corvid at all. Most unrelated but sometimes confused is a small rabbit like mountain mammal called a Pika, whose Scientific name used to be Pika pika, which sounds the same even though spelt differently, this driving a change of that one to something I cannot rememeber beginning with O.
Cultural significance
The Thieving Magpie overture by Rossini is a piece of music you would probably recongnise even if you do not know the name of it. It is La Gazza Ladra in Italian. Magpies are disliked as thieves of shiny objects, and also for their predation on the eggs and young of smaller songbirds, and also are regarded in some cultures as mystical harbingers of various portents, as typifies in the rhyme references in the title. Nevertheless, there are many regional variations of the “one for sorrow, two for joy” rhyme (I even made one myself called “Fagpie” in which the noxious effects of smoking are listed. It was inspired by a meme of one Magpie holding a cigarette in its beak. If these things were actually true, they would probably be universally true and not have one meaning in one place and another meaning in another, but all we can gain is that this iconic corvid bird with its unique intelligence is very good at tapping into the human propensity for superstition.
Original YT playout date: 22 January 2009
Duration: 12:06
A look at the park near the Soviet War Memorial by Zwirki i Wigury in Warsaw, with the running commentary you may have come to expect. This is a sort of “blog on the hoof” style with attention to nature and history. Enjoy! Continue reading “USSR War Memorial Park”→
Over the last few weeks I didn’t manage to make a Corvid-19 article in this series, which doesn’t bode well for coming quickly out of the crisis, as it won’t be finished until I get to the end of the series, but on the plus side we do have some positive news about treatments emerging in the USA and the UK. Today we continue our review with another Corvus genus member, one of the less well known Corvids, the nutcracker. This is in fact three species from both the old and new world, and 9 subspecies, but we will be focusing on the one with the broadest distribution for our gang of 19 Corvids, namely the spotted nutcracker.
Thanks to Murray B Henson for placing this excellent image of a spotted nutcracker in the Morskie Oko National Park in Poland in the public domain.
We are presenting the info for each Corvid in a similar tabular form and there will be a publication available at the end of the series where you will be able to get hold of the combined table.
Common Name
Spotted nutcracker
Other names
German
Nussbrecher
French
Cassenoix
Russian
Кедровка
Polish
Orzechówka
Scientific Name
Nucifraga caryocatactes
Number of species in the genus
3
Number of subspecies in this species
9
Literal meaning of Scientific name
“Nut shatterer” in Latin and Greek respectively
Described by
Linnaeus 1758
First attested in literature
Not many references to the species are made in culture. The nutcracker suite by Tchaikovsky refers to the metal implement used to crack nuts. In 1693 the word appears in English in the translation of a German travel guide, the bird itself not being found in the UK, although a sister species, Clark’s nutcracker, is found in Western North America but William Clark, the explorer for whom it was named (not in Latin though – it is Nucifraga columbiana – described to science in 1811 based on Clark’s specimen by Scottish naturalist Alexander Wilson, dubbed the ‘father of American ornithology”) only discovered it in 1805.
Wingspan (cm)
53
Length bill to tail (cm)
38
Distribution
Again this Eurasian species has a very broad range from Sweden and Poland in the West to the Pacific Coasts of Siberia and China as well as upland Japan. The Himalayan species of nutcracker, the large spotted nutcracker (N. multipunctata) is considered a distinct species. Despite its name it is not significantly larger than the spotted nutcracker.
Remarks
They have a range of vocalisations and are social. Their diet is largely the seeds of pine cones and cedar nuts, giving rise to the Russian name of “Kedrovka”. They do not actually crack heavily shelled nuts with their beaks in the way the implement called a nutcracker does, with the exception of some local subspecies adapted for the cracking of hazlenuts. They store the seeds which they do not eat.
Migrations
Some of the nine subspecies migrated slightly within the range.
Sexual dimorphism
Barely noticeable. Pairs remain together for life and both partners feed the young.
Close relatives
The nutcrackers are in a subfamily of Corvids on their own, in fact many people may not realise that they are corvids as they are not a typically crow-like bird. Nevertheless, they are more closely related to true Corvids in the standard cladograms than jays or magpies are.
Not close relatives thought to be close
The overall shape of the body and beak could lead one to suspect that the bird is related to the very broad Starling family, including mynahs and a host of tropical birds from the old world, however the Sturnidae are not closely related.
Cultural significance
One cannot find much about these birds in literature, poetry or song.
