Charneco

(Azure-winged Magpie)

Scientific name: Cyanopica cyanus

This bird is native to the south of the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain) and also to China, Korea, Japan, northern Mongolia and southern Russia.

This particular distribution is due to the fragmentation of a continuous population that stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to the Far East around 1.2 million years ago. The split was due to climate change caused by the last Ice Age: the reduction in temperature was so marked that the populations of this species disappeared from Eastern Europe and the Middle East, with only the populations at the extremes of the Eurasian continent remaining. They found refuge there because the temperatures were more tolerable.

Oil pastels on paper, 34x24cm