Red-billed Blue Magpie (Urocissa erythroryncha) [XC720146]
by Greg Irving from University of Chinese Academy of Science, Yanqi Lake Campus, Beijing, China (song)
Red-billed Blue Magpie (Urocissa erythroryncha) [XC694493]
by Ding Li Yong from Ban Kaeng, Si Satchanalai District, Sukhothai, Thailand (call)
Subspecies
Genus has sometimes been subsumed in Cissa, but three members of latter seem to form a distinctive group. Forms a superspecies with Taiwan Blue Magpie (Urocissa caerulea) and Yellow-billed Blue Magpie (Urocissa flavirostris). Subspecies alticola initially described under name "caerulea", but this name is invalid, as preoccupied. Species name often misspelt "erythrorhyncha".
The following 5 subspecies are recognised:
occipitalis (Blyth, 1846) - North-western India (from Jammu and vicinity of Kangra, in Himachal Pradesh) east to extreme eastern Nepal.
magnirostris (Blyth, 1846) - North-eastern India (south of R Brahmaputra) eastern across Myanmar and Thailand to north-western Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
alticola Birckhead, 1938 - Southern China (north-western and northern Yunnan) and adjacent northern Myanmar.
brevivexilla Swinhoe, 1874 - Eastern China (from south-eastern Inner Mongolia and western Liaoning south to southern Gansu, southern Ningxia, Shanxi and Hebei).
erythroryncha (Boddaert, 1783) - Central, southern and south-eastern China (including Hainan).
BirdLife International Species Factsheet