Many visitors arrive in the eastern Sierra from southern California and are thrilled to see the flashy Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonia) as it crosses the road in front of them or flies alongside their car as if in welcome. They are not used to seeing this large, black-and-white member of the crow family, since the southern limit of its range in California is right here in Inyo County. The magpie occurs widely throughout the western United States, east of the Sierra Cascade axis, and north to Alaska.
There is an interesting mystery concerning the magpie’s distribution in Inyo County. In the late 19th century, Dr. A. K. Fisher headed an expedition to conduct bird surveys in southern California, southern Nevada, southern Utah, and parts of Arizona. Many of the most prominent names in ornithology at the time helped in this comprehensive work. C. Hart Merriam, Vernon Bailey, Edward. W. Nelson, Theodore S. Palmer, and Frank Stephens plus a few lesser-known ornithologists took part in various areas of the survey. Some spent only a few months in Inyo while others spent most of a year here. The expedition covered not only all of what is now Death Valley National Park but all of the mountain ranges in Inyo, the east slope of the Sierra north to the headwaters of the Owens River, and the Owens Valley. They recorded most of the species we see today with many records from the vicinity of Little Owens Lake (Little Lake), Haiwee Meadows (Haiwee Reservoir), Olancha, Owens Lake, Long Pine, Independence, Big Pine and Bishop.
Imagine our surprise back in the 1970s when we read the expedition report for the first time and saw that “The Black-billed Magpie was not seen by the expedition but is known to be a common resident in the neighborhood of Carson in western Nevada.” Wow! We assumed that they had “always” been in the Owens Valley.
Enid Larsen, a chipmunk scientist, teacher, and dear friend, who had spent most of her life in the Owens Valley gave a one word retort when we told her that magpies were not here in 1890-1891, “Hogwash!” We told her about the expedition and highly respected ornithologists who conducted the surveys but she would not believe it. She remembered them as a little girl in southern Bishop as she played in the sage.
The next morning, just past dawn, there was a rap on our door?it was Enid. She was brimming with news to tell. It seemed that we were not the first ones she visited that morning. However, we will let her tell her story. “Well, I worried all night that I would die before I solved the Black-billed Magpie problem. If I had died and Saint Peter asked me to explain the distribution of the magpie in Inyo County, I would not have been able to answer and that would have killed me!” (She paused to let us enjoy her joke). “This morning I talked with my Native American friend who is much older than I” (another pause) “and I asked her if there were magpies in the valley when she was young. After thinking about it for some time, she told me that when she was a very little girl there were no magpies in the valley. Therefore, it is true! Now I have the answer for Saint Peter!” Happily, she did not need it for another couple of decades.
Whether her friend remembered correctly after all those years is hard to say but we can state with certainty that this hard-to-overlook bird was not found by extremely competent observers in the late 19th century.
Today the species is fairly common throughout the Owens Valley although as one travels south they become fewer in number. Small numbers are reported south to Haiwee Reservoir. The earliest record for the county, so far, is an egg set collected near Laws 22 Apr 1916 that resides at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley. If anyone has further information regarding the early days and the arrival of the Black-billed Magpie in Inyo County, we would love to hear from them.
Another major mystery involves this species but that will have to wait for another time!
Tags: crow, magpie