The sexes are so precisely alike in colouring, that although on comparison the female is found to be rather less than the male in all her admeasurements, they can only be distinguished with certainty by dissection.
Head, neck and chest black; hinder part of the neck, shoulders, centre of the wing, rump and under surface white; two middle tail-feathers entirely black, the remainder black largely tipped with white; bill lead-colour at the base, black at the tip; legs black; irides brown.
The young during the first autumn are very different from the adult, particularly in the colouring of the head and chest, which is light brown instead of black; the bill, as in most youthful birds, is also very different, the basal portion being dark fleshy brown instead of lead-colour.
The Plate represents a male and female of the natural size.
CRACTICUS PICATUS: Gould.
J. Gould and H. C. Richter del et lith. Hullmandel & Walton Imp.
CRACTICUS PICATUS.
Pied Crow-Shrike.
Cracticus picatus, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc., February 22, 1848.
Ka-ra-a-ra, Aborigines of Port Essington.
Magpie, of the Colonists.