All those people crying out for access to HANZAB now have it online, thanks to our Steve Wallace, and a few others. As an early priority they will have gone to vol 7A, p. 619 to read about geographical variation in the
Australian Magpie, to be met by the daunting words ‘very complex, and views concerning species and subspecies vary considerably’. Seriously, just p. 621 about hybrids between White-backed and Black-backed birds is worth a look. In our region, with an ACT
set of birds being mentioned specifically, there are populations with a mix of plumage types.
HANZAB takes us to 2006, and to my inexpert eye not very much has been done since then to advance our understanding of the subject. However, I see that Jamie Matthew, compiler of the magpie entry in HANZAB, became co-author
of a significant paper by Andrew Black et al. in 2024. This proposed arrangement, helpfully in our area, reduces the number of mainland subspecies to four. It also gives a vast intergrade area, boundaries approximate, but including Canberra, where the magpie
population is not to be assigned to any single subspecies. Next: eBird and the Magpies
