With a Blue-throated Barbet calling in the background, a Red-billed Blue Magpie feeds her brood of four chicks on the nest, then sits on them to protect them from the harsh summer sun, in the Himalayan foothills where she lives!

The Red-billed Blue Magpie ( Urocissa erythrorhyncha)is a species of bird in the crow family Corvidae . It is about the same size as the EuropeanMagpie but has a much longer tail. The head, neck and breast are black with a bluish spotting on the crown. The shoulders and rump are a duller blue and theunderparts are a greyish cream. The long tail is a brighter blue (as are the wing primaries) with a broad white tip. The bill isa bright orange-red as are the legs and feet and a ring around the eye. This red can vary across its range to almost yellow insome birds. It occurs in a broad swathe from the western Himalayas, eastwards into China and Vietnam in evergreen forest and scrub inpredominantly hilly or mountainous country.

Food is sought both in trees and on the ground. It takes the usual wide range of food, such as invertebrates, other smallanimals, and fruit and some seeds. It robs nests of eggs and also chicks.

This footage is part of the professionally-shot stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of imagery from South Asia. The Wilderness Films India collection comprises of thousands of hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM 1080i High Definition, HDV and Digital Betacam. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world... wfi @ vsnl.com and [email protected].