An interesting bird

The second day we were in Akademgorodok, we saw this bird on one of our walks. Via email, Bonnie identified it for us: “The bird is a magpie. I looked it up in a Japanese guide I have just to make sure. We actually have them here in MN, up in the bog area north of Duluth and west to Alaska and out on the Aleutians. They are pretty spectacular when you see them fly.”

We often see this bird. It's big and colorful and has a big voice, too. Turns out it is related to jays and crows so its noisy habits are not so unusual. We saw a magpie at the botanical garden last Friday. Sasha explained that in Russia, this bird’s name is soroka. She said that Russians say, "Soroka beloboka" because its white sides show clearly when it flies. I will try to get a better picture before we leave.


We're catching up with previous posts: Added Sep 23, Sep 30 and updated the Sep 29 post. You can find them in the "Previous Posts" list on the right by clicking on "Laundry and a walk" for the 23rd; "Seasonal Changes" for the 30th; "Central Siberian Botanical Garden" and "Meeting friends of friends" for the 29th posts.
Also, we added another entry for Sep 14 and one for Sep 15 and another for Sep 16. These last three will be filed in the Sep 2006 archives as "Novosibirsk State University" and "Getting Settled" and "Testing technologies." Sorry there's no link to them in the archives but they are filed in reverse chronological order. You can scroll down to find them.