Crows (Corvidae)

Red-billed Blue Magpie (Urocissa erythroryncha) - HBW 14, p. 596

French: Pirolle à bec rouge German: Rotschnabelkitta Spanish: Urraca Piquirroja
Other common names: Blue/Red-billed Magpie

Taxonomy: Corvus erythrorynchus Boddaert, 1783, Canton (Guangzhou) south China.
Genus has sometimes been subsumed in Cissa, but three members of latter seem to form a distinctive group. Present species forms a superspecies with U. caerulea and U. flavirostris. Race alticola initially described under name "caerulea", but this name is invalid, as preoccupied. Species name often misspelt "erythrorhyncha". Five subspecies recognized.

Subspecies and Distribution:

occipitalis ( Blyth, 1846) - NW India (from Jammu and vicinity of Kangra, in Himachal Pradesh) E to extreme E Nepal.
magnirostris ( Blyth, 1846) - NE India (S of R Brahmaputra) E across Myanmar and Thailand to NW Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
alticola Birckhead, 1938 - S China (NW & N Yunnan) and adjacent N Myanmar.

See all 5 subspecies

occipitalis ( Blyth, 1846) - NW India (from Jammu and vicinity of Kangra, in Himachal Pradesh) E to extreme E Nepal.
magnirostris ( Blyth, 1846) - NE India (S of R Brahmaputra) E across Myanmar and Thailand to NW Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
alticola Birckhead, 1938 - S China (NW & N Yunnan) and adjacent N Myanmar.
brevivexilla Swinhoe, 1874 - E China (from SE Inner Mongolia and W Liaoning S to S Gansu, S Ningxia, Shanxi and Hebei).
erythroryncha ( Boddaert, 1783) - C, S & SE China (including Hainan).