Magpies Black-billed magpies are one of interior Alaska's more striking and interesting birds. With their long tail and black and white colors, they are an easy bird for even young children to recognize. This winter as well as in past winters, I have noticed a pair of magpies hanging around McGrath. Although flocks of up to 40 magpies normally travel and roost together in the winter, McGrath is probably too small a town to support more than a couple of birds all winter long.
Magpies are primarily insect and invertebrate eaters.
Magpies will also cache food when they find more than they can eat at one sitting. In this way they are able to take advantage of storing food away for times when it is more scarce. In some ways it is hard to believe magpies are able to survive our cold, snowy weather but by visiting the McGrath dump and cruising around area houses looking for dog food scraps, our one resident pair seems to do all right each year. One has to remember that although staying in McGrath for the winter has it's problems, migrating south also has it's own dangers. Magpies are actually members of the Crow family.