Yellow-breasted Magpie

About the Yellow-breasted Magpie

The Indochinese green magpie (Cissa hypoleuca), also known as the yellow-breasted magpie, is a small colourful bird native to the forests of China and Vietnam. The Indochinese green magpie was formally described in 1885 by the Italian zoologists Tommaso Salvadori and Enrico Hillyer Giglioli under the current binomial name Cissa hypoleuca based on a specimen collected in Thủ Dầu Một near Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam. The specific epithet hypoleuca combines the Ancient Greek ὑπο/hupo meaning "beneath" with λευκος/leukos meaning "white".

The genus Cissa includes three other short-tailed magpies species: the common green magpie (Cissa chinensis), the Javan green magpie (Cissa thalassina), and the Bornean green magpie (Cissa jefferyi). The name Cissa is derived from the Ancient Greek kissa which means a "jay" or "magpie" and the genus was discovered by Friedrich Boie in 1826. They all look very similar with their green plumage, iridescent red bill and black mask. They are part of the Corvidae family with crows, ravens, jays, amongst many others. As a perching bird, it is in the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Wikipedia →