The Murray Magpie

Today was Art Gallery Day. For weeks we have been planning this trip into the city to see the Turner Exhibition. The disappointing thing was that it was packed with people and so many wheelchairs. Plus the best Turners were kept back in UK.

However we did greatly enjoy a different exhibition next door at the Museum of SA on Art in Science from the Museum of Victoria. Free entry with time to spare, so we had an unhindered look at the great works of art. There was so much to see in this highly detailed drawing and paintings of bugs, beetles, birds and much more.

Back onto birds again this week!
On my way into the Art Gallery I noted this rather small, but normal sized magpie following us. It was the Magpie-lark (Grallina cyanoleuca) a famous Australian bird of small to medium size, also known as the Murray Magpie here in South Australia. It is not a bird I have seen or blipped before. We mostly see the much larger Australian Magpie.

The Murray Magpie had been relegated to a subfamily of fantails, but has been placed in a new family of Monarchidae (monarch flycatchers) since 2008. I knew none of this till I did a little research.

The Murray Magpie is around 26 to 30 cm long when fully grown, or about the same size as a European Common Blackbird, and boldly pied in black and white.

A primarily carnivorous species that eats all sorts of small creatures, the Murray Magpie can adapt to an enormous range of different habitats, requiring only some soft, bare ground for foraging, a supply of mud for making a nest, and a tree to make it in.

Birds generally pair for life (though divorce is not unknown) and they vigorously defend a territory together.

Better black and white.