This one has me confused, and it threw me off earlier when I looked up 'magpie' and got nothing back. Wouldn't it make sense to just replace this tag with just 'magpie' instead? This is the only species tag I can think of that specifies any sort of taxonomy in this particular way. For example, we don't use raven_(corvid) or leopard_(felidae), so why does this tag in particular specify the family, when the 'magpie' tag itself isn't used? I know there's other use cases for 'magpie' like the artist and some characters but you don't have to look farther than 'caribou' or again, 'raven' to find similar cases. So why not just make the tag 'magpie'?
Topic: Why is there a magpie_(corvid) tag? Why not just Magpie?
Posted under Tag Alias and Implication Suggestions
There's a disambiguation page: magpie_(disambiguation).
Not saying that it's a good explanation, but it is an explanation.
There was a point in this site's history where everyone really cared about species tags being taxonomically correct. We are dealing with the consequences of that period to this day.
Two reasons:
1, there are two different types of birds called magpies in different parts of the world and they don't look that much alike. In the west, the most common is the magpies in the corvid family, especially ones like the black-billed magpie and the eurasian magpie . These magpies have their white patches mainly on the lower chest. Meanwhile the australian magpie is not actually that closely related they just have the same name, and they have their white patches mainly on the back of the neck or sections of their back instead. They all get called commonly "magpies" in different parts of the world though, even if they don't look the same.
2, Also there's an artist, a couple characters AND the two species all sharing the same word. Even worse, most people aren't thinking about the other possible results when searching, they're only expecting the one that they are most familiar with.
So the tag had to be subdivided into more specific tags for each different thing. Otherwise it would just be a shared mess, which wouldn't be very useful.