The common green magpie (Cissa chinensis) is a member of the crow family, roughly about the size of the Eurasian jay or slightly smaller.

In the wild specimens are usually a bright and lush green in colour (often fades to turquoise in captivity or with poor diet as the pigment is carotenoid based[2]), slightly lighter on the underside and has a thick black stripe from the bill (through the eyes) to the nape.

The common green magpie was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1775 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux.

[3] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.

[4] Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Coracias chinensis in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.