Culture techniques of Grey Magpie

Grey magpies are also known as mountain magpies, long-tailed magpies, blue-winged magpies, blue magpies, blue bladder magpies, goose magpies, iris magpies, long tail magpies, horsetail magpies, gray magpies, blue bladder magpies and so on. It belongs to Passeriformes and Corvidae. Let's take a look at the breeding techniques of gray magpies.

Morphological characteristics of grey magpie

From a macro point of view, the gray magpie has a dark hue, with a tail length, accounting for nearly 59% of the body length. Body length 41 cm mouth peak 26 mm, wing 140 mm, tail 240 mm, tarsal bone 34 mm.

The top of the head, the side of the head and the back of the neck are blue-black and shiny, while the rest of the upper body is purplish gray. The wing feathers are bluish blue, and the outer ends of the primary feathers are mostly white. The tail feathers are also bluish blue, the apex is gray, and the central pair is the longest. Chin and throat are white, and the rest of the lower body is brownish gray. Eyes are dark brown. Mouth, feet and toes are all black. It is difficult to distinguish between male and female in terms of feather color.

The living habits of the Grey Magpie

Grey magpies like to form more than a dozen small groups to move in plains, foothills, courtyards, threshing grounds and so on. Often inhabit trees and sometimes hunt in the ground. Fly from time to time, whining while flying. The song is monotonous and shrill, like "quack!" Quack, quack! " . Sexual ferocious, to animal substances as the staple food, the vast majority of agricultural and forestry pests, such as beetle headland, day moth, Tianshe moth, borer moth, cotton bollworm, bugs, pine caterpillar and so on. According to statistics, a gray magpie can prey on more than 10,000 pine caterpillars a year, which is equivalent to protecting an acre of pine forest from pests. Sometimes I eat berries and plant seeds. The nest is built on a big tree, and the nest is not only small relative to the body length, but also shallow and flat, so the female often shows her head and tail out of the nest.

Because people regard magpies as auspicious birds, do not mention some of their bad deeds, and complain that "Wei magpies have nests, Vidoves live in them", and think that "doves" have occupied the nests of magpies. In fact, there is nothing to occupy the nests of magpies, but magpies often rob their homes, seize their birds' nests, and even steal other people's descendants-eggs and chicks. The nest of the gray magpie is made up of twigs, covered with animal hair, hemp, fiber and so on. For every 5-6 eggs laid, the eggs are grayish white with brown spots. Shangdian entered the spawning period in May. The spawning stopped in the middle of July, and the hatching work of 16-18 days was almost monopolized by the female. Male and female parent birds raise their chicks together, and the nestling period is about 18 days. After leaving the nest, Zhou Wei first moved in the nest area, then led by the parent bird to 2 OOO meters away to hunt, and then returned to the nest at night.

Breeding techniques of Grey Magpie

The breeding period is from May to July. Multi-camp nests in secondary forests and plantations, as well as nesting near villages and towns and on sidewalk trees by the roadside, and has a habit of making use of old nests, sometimes abandoned nests of crows. Usually nest in poplar, mountain Dingzi, elm, young pine and other medium-height trees. The height of nest to ground is 2-15mm. The nest is relatively simple, shallow disk-shaped or platform-shaped, mainly composed of thin dead branches, interspersed with grass stems and leaves, covered with animal hair such as moss, leaves, hemp, bark fiber, cow hair, razor hair, pig hair and so on. Male and female parent birds build nests together, and the size of the nest is 17-18cm in outer diameter, 11-12cm in inner diameter, high 20cm and 0-7cm in depth. Each litter laid 4-9 eggs, mostly 6-7 eggs. The egg is oval, gray, grayish white, light green or grayish green, covered with brown spots. The size of the egg is 19-21mm × 24-28mm and its weight is 5.5-7g. The female hatched eggs and the incubation period was 15 ±1 days. The nestling becomes sexual late, and the male and female parent birds raise their chicks together, and the nesting period is 19 ±1 days.

1. The nests of gray magpies are carried out jointly by male and female birds, and young birds are fed by female hatching eggs and male and female parent birds together.

2. The tree species of gray magpie nesting in Beijing, China are mostly tall poplar, Robinia pseudoacacia and so on. Most of the nests are built at the intersection of the main lateral branches in the middle and upper part of the crown, and some nests are built at the lower lateral branches and trunk. The nest is 312 m above the ground.

3. the shape of the gray magpie nest is platform-shaped and slightly sunken. The main components on the outside of the nest are withered branches, withered weeds, plastic sheet, pier cloth strips, and the main components in the nest are twigs, twine, fiber, animal feathers, feathers and so on. 4. Grey magpies lay an average of about 7 eggs per nest. The eggs of gray magpies lay all their eggs and then hatch. The average weight of eggs is 5g.

5. During the rearing period, it was observed that when someone went up the tree to measure the weight of the nestling, the gray magpie made a chirping sound. Other gray magpies around them fly together, often chirping and chirping all the time, indicating that the gray magpies have the characteristics of herding, intraspecific mutual assistance and grouping.

6. During the nestling rearing period, in order to keep the nestling clean, when the nestling defecates, the parent bird often uses its beak to hold it outside the nest to make the nestling grow up healthily.

7. Grey magpies are usually active at dawn in summer. In terms of feeding time when raising chicks, gray magpies have to feed their young every 10 minutes, and its range of activities is about 3 kilometers.

Culture techniques of Grey Magpie

1. The choice of birds

Grey magpies like to eat dozens of agricultural and forestry pests, such as pine caterpillars, debt-evading moths, yellow moths, ground tigers, and so on. According to statistics, a grey happy crane can eliminate 15000 pine caterpillars a year and protect an acre of pine forest from harm. Therefore, breeding, domestication, breeding and attracting gray magpies are prevalent in many forest areas in order to restrain the development of forestry pests. Cage bird lovers often use it as a teacher bird and let other songbirds learn its call, commonly known as "sipping bird". In the north, bird lovers list the chirping of the gray magpie as an indispensable "mouth" in the songs of larks, thrushes, yellow finches, larks, and sand larks. Quack! A crisp cry, such as quack.

In order to make beloved songbirds learn the sound of gray magpies, during the bird "catchy" period, birds are often put into the woods where gray magpies live early in the morning to "sip". It usually takes a week or more for birds to learn to bark, and after molting, some birds will forget, or call not clearly, and then go to nature to sip. As a teacher bird, the gray magpie usually takes out the nestling, but the male and female are not demanding, so it is best to choose the chick that will leave the nest (about 15 days old). It is not only easy to survive, but also has learned the original song of an old bird. If you pick it up, you can become a teacher bird.

2. The characteristics of the cage

Grey magpies have beautiful long tails and are usually raised on straight frames in order not to damage them. The straight frame should be thicker and longer than the straight frame of small birds such as cross-billed finches and tin-billed finches, with a diameter of about 2.5 cm and a length of about 50 cm. However, in order to breed, they can be raised in pairs or in groups in large wire cages.

3. Feed feeding method

Grey magpies feed mainly on animal food, especially nestling, and the parent birds are fed almost entirely by insects and larvae. Newly picked chicks can be fed with leather worms, beetles, locusts, flour worms, pine caterpillars, etc., but these insects are more difficult to obtain, uneconomical, and will eventually be changed to artificial feeding.

So you might as well start with mixed feed. In the early stage, the mouth was broken and fed, and the sound signal was given. After a day or two, as soon as the sound signal is given, the chicks will open their mouths and shake their wings and swallow. The proportion of mixed feed can be steamed with ground corn flour (or chicken mixed noodles) and raw meat foams to make balls or cut into small pieces, or cooked rice can be mixed with cooked meat foams (accounting for 1 beat 2) with soup. In order to make the nestling grow healthily, vitamins and minerals can be supplemented appropriately.

4. Management and training

Whether they are young or adult birds, they are not used to raising them for the first time, but gray magpies are not afraid of people and are easy to tame. They can stand firmly on the perch after a few days of training. Once you start singing, you should hang it on a high place, and put the songbird in a low place and put it in a cage to make it listen for 2 hours every morning, and the rest of the time close to the ground. In addition to paying attention to the hygiene of food and water and the handling of faeces, daily management should prevent obstacles near the bird rack so that birds will not be hanged due to the winding of their necklines. Birds often bite the neckline to play, and sometimes bite off and escape, so check it often.

Grey magpie is a northern resident bird, generally not afraid of the cold, can be raised outdoors, but food, water can not freeze.