Dear Editor,
Please pass this on to A. Rentner.
Thank you, Mr. Rentner, for your insights on the yellow-billed magpie in your Wildlife Weekly of April 2. Their distinctive, un-shy caw-call unmistakably differentiates them from all other animals, so that I nearly always hear one or more before seeing it/them flitting about.
I’m not sure about the yellow bill, but the piebald birds themselves are legion throughout the 87,000 acres of Henry W. Coe State Park, where I have mountain-biked extensively for a long time, and where they break the silence there close at hand or at a distance.
As you say, “One never knows where the flashy blank-and-white-feathered bird will show.” One day, in one large oak tree on my way up Coit Rd. from Henry Coe’s Hunting Hollow entrance, almost to Coit Horse Camp/Corral, a raucous cacophony of many confabulating in one tree was striking.
Just last Wednesday, at the start and end of my pre-race mountain bike prep ride through Ft. Ord National Monument at the Badger Hills Trailhead parking area next to Highway 68 (Salinas-Monterey Highway), a couple of ancient sycamores there held a few calling out and flying about. So they are a versatile and adaptive species!
Your avid reader,
Mark Brux
