This is a resident bird in central and south western Iberia.

The head is black, throat pale, body buff with blue wings and long blue tail.

Food is mostly insects and berries.

These birds live in loose communities with perhaps 10 to 70 grouped together. The work of raising chicks is not only done by the parents but also shared by juvenile birds.

Their preferred habitat is woodland and can be Stone pines (Pinus pinea) as in the area of Doñana or Holm oak dehesas (Quercus ilex) in Extremadura. There are many groups living across the length of the Sierra Morena mountain chain from Sierra de Aracena to Despeñaperros.

They are chosen as host birds by the Great Spotted Cuckoo (Clamator glandarius).

The most curious thing about the Azure-winged magpie is its world distribution. It can only be found living in one other area in the world, south eastern Asia. They can be seen in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese forests. One of the original hypotheses as to why it was found in such extreme geographic locations was that Portuguese sailors may have brought some back from their travels as caged pet’s which then escaped and spread from Portugal and into Spain. This theory was not widely accepted, partly because of the difference in size and colouration between these two colonies was too great to have developed in just 500 years.

The Portuguese sailor notion was proved incorrect when fossilised remains were discovered in a cave in Gibraltar and were scientifically dated in 2000. They were traced back to more than 40,000 years BC and the remains of the birds were discovered in layers along with those of Neanderthal man and his tools. This would mean that Gibraltar had a tree covered surrounding at that time, in order for the birds to be in residence. The closest area to Gibraltar now for these birds is the pinewoods of La Algaida on the shores of the Guadalquivir near its entry to the Atlantic ocean.

The two birds are now considered as separate species after DNA testing has proven that they were isolated some 20,000 to 100,000 years ago during the Pleistocene era. The land was covered in ice over central Europe, leaving the extremes of south west Europe and south eat Asia as habitable zones, hence driving apart the populations.

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