In search of Our Magpie, 4

["Peter Cranston via Canberrabirds " <>]

Indeed the very same Jane Hughes, recently retired from Griffith Uni. Her interest in the magpies has been career-long. Alicia Toon has taken the baton in recent years. I've attached the paper for anyone that is interested. Its nice work

Pete 

On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 at 15:32, Philip Veerman via Canberrabirds <> wrote:

Good. I expect that the Hughes J, is Jane Hughes who was a post graduate student at La Trobe University working in the genetics or zoology department on magpie variation, when I was doing my honours year there (1978). As I recall her telling in a seminar at some time thereafter, genetic markers for diversity don’t really align in any meaningful way (geographically) with back colour variation. The back colour is one of a range of genetic variations but happens to be the one that is obvious to us. That is the way I remember it. Of course, I could remember the name wrongly or it could be someone else.

 

Philip

 

From: Canberrabirds On Behalf Of Geoffrey Dabb via Canberrabirds
Sent: Thursday, 5 February, 2026 3:10 PM
To: Canberrabirds <>
Subject: [Canberrabirds] In search of Our Magpie, 4

 

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

 

 

 

 

--
This is the email announcement and discussion list of the Canberra Ornithologists Group.
Emails posted to the list that exceed 2 MB (2,000 kB) in size, including attachments, will be rejected.
All emails distributed via the list are archived at http://bioacoustics.cse.unsw.edu.au/archives/html/canberrabirds. It is a condition of list membership that you agree to your contributions being archived.

Canberrabirds mailing list

https://lists.canberrabirds.org.au/mailman/listinfo/canberrabirds

This email and any files transmitted with it may contain confidential information. If you believe you have received this email or any of its contents in error, please notify me immediately by return email and destroy this email. Do not use, disseminate, forward, print or copy any contents of an email received in error.

SAO2024_Vol48_Black-etal_Magpies_p1-23.pdf
Description: SAO2024_Vol48_Black-etal_Magpies_p1-23.pdf

ATT00001.txt
Description: ATT00001.txt