It is a robust crowlike bird averaging around 48 cm (19 in) in length, black or sooty grey-black in plumage with white undertail and wing patches, yellow irises, and a heavy bill.

Within its range, the pied currawong is generally sedentary, although populations at higher altitudes relocate to lower areas during the cooler months.

Roosting, nesting and the bulk of foraging take place in trees, in contrast with the ground-foraging behaviour of its relative, the Australian magpie.

The pied currawong's binomial names were derived from the Latin strepera, meaning "noisy", and graculina for resembling a jackdaw.

[10] It was first described by English ornithologist George Shaw in John White's 1790 book, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, as the "white-vented crow", with Latin name Corvus graculinus.

[3] The specific epithet strepera (or its masculine form, streperus) was used by several subsequent authors including Leach, Vieillot, Shaw, Temminck, and Gould, in genera Corvus (crows), Cracticus,[7] Gracula (grackles),[4] Barita,[5] and Coronica.

The affinities of all three genera were recognised early on and they were placed in the family Cracticidae in 1914 by ornithologist John Albert Leach after he had studied their musculature.

[21] Ornithologists Charles Sibley and Jon Ahlquist recognised the close relationship between woodswallows and butcherbirds in 1985, and combined them into a Cracticini clade,[22] which became the family Artamidae.

[36] Juvenile birds have similar markings to adults but have softer and brownish plumage overall, although the white band on the tail is narrower.

[38] The pied currawong is common in both wet and dry sclerophyll forests, rural and semi-urban environments throughout eastern Australia, from Cape York Peninsula to western Victoria and Lord Howe Island, where it occurs as an endemic subspecies.

[42] More recently still, a survey of the population of pied currawongs in southeastern Queensland between 1980 and 2000 had found the species had become more numerous there, including suburban Brisbane.

[42] It has disappeared from Tryon, North West, Masthead and Heron Islands in the Capricorn Group on the Great Barrier Reef.

[49] In the first half of the twentieth century, pied currawongs were shot as they were considered pests of corn and strawberry crops, as well as assisting in the spread of the prickly pear.

[15] Pied currawongs are generally tree-dwelling, hunting and foraging some metres above the ground, and thus able to share territory with the ground-foraging Australian magpie.

Birds roost in forested areas or large trees at night, disperse to forage in the early morning and return in the late afternoon.

[50] Although often solitary or encountered in small groups, the species may form larger flocks of fifty or more birds in autumn and winter.

[38] It builds a nest of thin sticks lined with grass and bark high in trees in spring; generally eucalypts are chosen and never isolated ones.

It produces a clutch of three eggs; they are a light pinkish-brown colour (likened by one author to that of silly putty) with splotches of darker pink-brown and lavender.

Like all passerines, the chicks are born naked, and blind (altricial), and remain in the nest for an extended period (nidicolous) They quickly grow a layer of ashy-grey down.

[56] The channel-billed cuckoo (Scythrops novaehollandiae) parasitizes pied currawong nests, laying eggs which are then raised by the unsuspecting foster parents.

They will often scavenge, eating scraps and rubbish and can be quite bold when seeking food from people, lingering around picnic areas and bird-feeding trays.

[60] The pied currawong consumes fruit, including a wide variety of figs, such as the Moreton Bay (Ficus macrophylla), Port Jackson (F. rubiginosa), Banyan (F. virens) and Strangler fig (F. watkinsiana),[61] as well as lillypillies (Syzygium species), white cedar (Melia azedarach), plum pine (Podocarpus elatus), and geebungs (Persoonia species).

[49] Birds forage singly or in pairs in summer, and more often in larger flocks in autumn and winter, during which time they are more likely to loiter around people and urban areas.

[38] The species has been reported stealing food from other birds such as the Australian hobby (Falco longipennis),[63] collared sparrowhawk (Accipiter cirrocephalus), and sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita).

[49] A 2007 study conducted by researchers from the Australian National University showed that white-browed scrubwren (Sericornis frontalis) nestlings became silent when they heard the recorded sound of a pied currawong walking through leaf litter.