Roosting
Like American Crows, magpies tend to roost communally in winter. Every evening they fly, often in groups and sometimes over long distances, to reach safe roosting sites such as dense trees or shrubs that impede predator movement, or, at higher latitudes, dense conifers that afford good wind protection. In Canada they arrive at the roosting site earlier in the evening and leave later in the morning on colder days. At the roosting site they tend to occupy trees singly; they do not huddle. They sleep with the bill tucked under the scapular (shoulder) and back feathers, adopting this position sooner on colder nights. During the night they may also regurgitate, in the form of pellets, the undigested parts of what they ate during the day. Such pellets can be found on the ground and then used to determine at least part of the birds' diet.
Read more about this topic: Black-billed Magpie
Famous quotes containing the word roosting:
“Sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn’t roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain’t ever forgot. I never see papa when he didn’t want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)