My colleague, Ben Bederson, was recently working in Mongolia. When he came back he asked “What are all these black and white birds I kept seeing?” They were pretty much the only animal life he saw other than people and livestock.
As this fine photo shows, he was seeing magpies, Pica pica. I’m unable to find my book with the subspecific range maps, so I don’t know if this is likely to be P. p. sericea(the same subspecies I studied in South Korea ten years ago) or one of the central Asian subspecies. Will post that and update the spot when I have more information.
