Detailed Explanation of Grey Magpie Rearing Techniques and Management Methods

The grey magpie is also known as the mountain magpie, long-tailed magpie, blue-winged magpie, blue magpie, blue-shouldered fragrant magpie, goose magpie, kite magpie, long-tailed fellow, horse-tail magpie, grey magpie, blue-shouldered magpie, and so on. It belongs to the order Passeriformes, family Corvidae. Let us take a look at the rearing techniques for the grey magpie!

Morphological Characteristics of the Grey Magpie

From a macro perspective, the grey magpie has a rather dark tone, with a long tail that accounts for nearly 59% of its body length. Body length 41 cm, bill length 26 mm, wing 140 mm, tail 240 mm, tarsus 34 mm.

The crown, sides of the head and hind neck are all blue-black with a glossy sheen, while the rest of the upperparts are pale purplish-grey. The wing feathers are cyan-blue, and the outer ends of the primary flight feathers are mostly white. The tail feathers are also cyan-blue with greyish-white tips, and the central pair is the longest. The chin and throat are white, and the rest of the underparts are pale brownish-grey. The eyes are dark brown; the bill, legs and toes are all black. It is difficult to distinguish male from female by plumage colour.

Living Habits of the Grey Magpie

The grey magpie likes to form small flocks of a dozen or so and activity in plains, foothills, courtyards, threshing grounds and so on. It often perches in trees and sometimes comes down to the ground to forage. It flies from time to time, calling as it flies. Its call is monotonous and shrill, sounding like "caw-caw! caw-caw-jee!". It is fierce by nature and feeds mainly on animal matter, the vast majority of which consists of agricultural and forestry pests, such as scarab beetles, hawk moths, notodontid moths, snout moths, cotton bollworms, stink bugs, pine caterpillars and so on. According to statistics, one grey magpie can prey on more than 10,000 pine caterpillars a year, equivalent to protecting one mu of pine forest from pest damage. It sometimes also eats berries and plant seeds. It nests in large trees; the nest is not only small relative to its body length, but also shallow and flat, so the female bird often leaves her head and tail sticking out of the nest while incubating.

Because people regard the magpie as an auspicious bird, they say not a word about certain of its misdeeds, and they complain that "the magpie has a nest, and the cuckoo occupies it", believing that the "cuckoo" has seized the magpie's nest. In fact, the magpie's nest is so crude that there is nothing worth occupying; rather, the magpie often raids and plunders, seizing the nests of other birds, and even stealing and eating their descendants -- eggs and chicks. The grey magpie's nest is made of slender twigs, lined with animal hair, hemp, fibres and so on. It lays 5-6 eggs per clutch, the eggs being greyish-white with fine brown speckles. The egg-laying period begins in the first ten days of May and stops in mid-July; the 16-18 day incubation is almost entirely handled by the female alone. Both parent birds rear the chicks together, and the chick-rearing period is about 18 days. After leaving the nest, they first activity around the nest area, and later the parent birds lead them to places more than 2,000 m away to forage, returning to the nest only in the evening.

Breeding Techniques for the Grey Magpie

The breeding season is from May to July. It mostly nests in secondary forests and planted forests, and also nests near villages and towns and in roadside trees along pavements; it has the habit of using old nests, and sometimes also uses old nests abandoned by crows. It usually places its nest among the branches of medium-height trees such as poplars, Manchurian crabapple trees, elms and young pines. The nest is 2-15 mm above the ground. The nest is rather simple, shallow dish-shaped or platform-shaped, mainly formed by piling up fine dead twigs, interspersed with grass stems and grass leaves, and lined with sedge, tree leaves, hemp, bark fibres, cow hair, roe deer hair, pig hair and other animal hair. Both parent birds build the nest together; the nest measures 17-18 cm in outer diameter, 11-12 cm in inner diameter, 20 cm in height and 0-7 cm in depth. Each clutch contains 4-9 eggs, mostly 6-7. The eggs are oval, grey, greyish-white, pale green or greyish-green, densely covered with brown spots. The eggs measure 19-21 mm × 24-28 mm and weigh 5.5-7 g. The female incubates the eggs, with an incubation period of 15 ± 1 days. The chicks are altricial, and both parent birds rear them together, with a nestling period of 19 ± 1 days.

1. The grey magpie builds its nest jointly with both male and female birds; the female incubates the eggs, and both parent birds together feed the young.

2. In Beijing, China, the tree species on which the grey magpie mostly nests are taller poplars, black locusts and so on. The nests are mostly built at the crossings of the main and secondary branches in the middle and upper part of the crown, and some nests are built at the junctions of lower small side branches and the trunk. The nest is 3-12 m above the ground.

3. The grey magpie's nest is platform-shaped in appearance, slightly concave; the main components of the nest's exterior are dead twigs, dead weeds, plastic sheeting and mop strips, while the main components inside the nest are small slender twigs, hemp thread, fibres, animal hair, feathers and so on. 4. The grey magpie lays an average of about 7 eggs per nest; the grey magpie incubates only after the clutch is complete, and the average egg weight is 5 g.

5. Observation during the chick-rearing period shows that when someone climbs the tree to measure the chicks' weight, the grey magpie utters a "chatter, chatter" call. Other grey magpies nearby fly over together, and they often all "chatter, chatter" ceaselessly, indicating that the grey magpie has the characteristics of gregarious roosting, intraspecific mutual aid and flocking.

6. During the chick-rearing period, to keep the nest clean, when the chicks excrete droppings, the parent birds often catch them in their beaks and carry them outside the nest, so that the chicks grow up strong and healthy.

7. Adult grey magpies generally become active at first light in summer. Judging from the feeding times during chick-rearing, an adult grey magpie feeds its young once every 10 minutes, and its range of activity is about 3 km in all directions.

Rearing Techniques for the Grey Magpie

1. Selection of Birds

The grey magpie likes to eat dozens of agricultural and forestry pests such as pine caterpillars, bagworms, oriental moths, cutworms and so on. According to statistics, one grey magpie can eliminate about 15,000 pine caterpillars a year, and can protect one mu of pine forest from damage. Therefore, in many forest regions it is common to raise, tame, breed and attract grey magpies in order to suppress the spread of forestry pests. Cage-bird enthusiasts who keep grey magpies mostly use them as tutor birds, letting other songbirds learn their calls, commonly known as "sipping birds". In the north, bird-keeping enthusiasts list the grey magpie's calls as an indispensable "note" among the calls of the lark, hwamei, siskin, skylark, sand lark and so on; the main sounds are the grey magpie's crisp calls such as "caw-jee-jee-jee-jee! caw-jee! caw-";

To make a beloved songbird learn the grey magpie's call, during the bird's "picking up" period, the bird is often taken at dawn to the woods where grey magpies roost to "sip". It generally takes a week, or even longer, for the bird to learn the call, and after moulting some birds may forget it, or call indistinctly, and need to go into nature again to sip. The grey magpie kept as a tutor bird is generally taken as a nestling, and there are no strict requirements as to male or female; it is best to choose a chick that is about to leave the nest (about 15 days old). Not only does it survive easily, but it has already learned the old birds' own calls, so it can serve as a tutor bird as soon as it is taken.

2. Characteristics of the Cage

The grey magpie has a beautiful long tail; to prevent it from being damaged, it is usually kept on a straight perch. The straight perch should be slightly thicker and longer than those for small birds such as crossbills and hawfinches, with a diameter of about 2.5 cm and a length of about 50 cm. However, for breeding, they can be kept in pairs or in groups in large wire cages.

3. Feeding Methods

The grey magpie mainly eats animal food, especially the chicks, which the parent birds feed almost entirely on insects and larvae. Newly taken chicks can be fed with leather beetles, scarab beetles, locusts, flour worms, pine caterpillars and so on, but these insects are relatively difficult to obtain and not economical, and in the end they must be switched to artificial feed.

So it is better to feed mixed feed from the start. In the early stage, open the beak and stuff the food in, and give a sound signal. After a day or two, as soon as the sound signal is given, the chicks will open their beaks and flap their wings to swallow the food. For the proportion of the mixed feed, finely ground cornmeal (or chicken mixed feed powder) can be mixed with raw minced meat, steamed and made into balls or cut into small pieces, or cooked minced meat (accounting for 1/2) with its broth can be mixed with cooked white rice. To help the chicks grow healthily, vitamins and minerals can be supplemented appropriately.

4. Management and Training

Whether young or adult birds, they are always unaccustomed to being kept on a perch at first, but the grey magpie is not afraid of people and is easy to tame; after a few days of training it can stand steadily on the perch. Once it begins to call, it should be hung in a high place, while the songbird learning the call should be placed in a low place and covered with a cage cover, so that it listens quietly, for 1-2 hours every morning, and placed near the ground the rest of the time. In daily management, besides paying attention to the hygiene of food and water and the disposal of droppings, keep obstacles away from the bird perch, so that the bird is not hanged by the neck cord becoming entangled. The bird often bites the neck cord for fun, and sometimes bites it off and escapes, so it must be checked frequently.

The grey magpie is a resident bird of the north and generally is not afraid of cold, so it can be kept outdoors, but the food and water must not freeze.