just to say hello and stick up for magpies

Hi Starshine, I too like Magpies and just love their colours. I do not understand the people who would like to kill them off. I have two or three visiting my garden, the only thing I don't care for is their call which I find rather harsh.

Sacha

Hiya,

I love the Magpies, they are part of my favourite birds, elegant, pretty and very very smart birds, and they mate for life, brilliant.

Yeah, they do some nasty things, they go and look for nestlings during the breeding season, they also fight with other Magpies who try to enter their territories, I saw a pair beating up another foreign Magpie to death, then they were looking for its body to scavenge on it. Well, I cant say I wasnt troubled by these. But the fact is, it is simply nature, all the Magpies are trying to do is survive. So, I cant blame them for that.

It is just a shame that a minority of people wants to exterminate them for taking nestlings of song birds, while having themselves no direct predators. But the fact is, there is absolutely no scientific evidence proving the Magpie guilty of the decline of the populatin of song birds, why? cos they are not guilty. The decline of song birds is due in great part to the loss of their habitats, food ressources... and that cant be the Magpie but rather the humans.

Anyhoo, I am really thrilled to see that some people really like these birds. For me it is always a pleasure to see one crossing my path.

It seems to me that wherever you get human beings, you will always come across the element that wants to exterminate something. Then, "X" number  of years later, along come other people who want to bring them back - beavers, wolves and red kites spring to mind as recent examples. I have come to the conclusion that there is a certain type of "wildlife-lover" who simply enjoys killing things.

I love magpies because I live with 2, Pie and Chips, who both ended up at a wildlife hospital (Pie as an orphaned nestling, Chips as a naughty juvenile harrassing postmen) and both needed a loving home. Pie lives in our house, free-flying, and Chips has an aviary in the garden. Neither talks, atlhough both make *mwah* noises, and Pie will RAKK in reply if you cough, and make a human sniff sound if he disapproves of what you're doing (eg eating food without sharing), or your instruction (eg "please get off my shoulder as I need to leave the room"). We also have a long-suffering cat who thankfully shows no predatory interest in birds whatsoever (will even walk through a garden full of them without batting an eyelid). Unfortunately her waving, fluffy tail above the coffee table is often too much for Pie to resist, and he will try to grab a beakful of fur!

I also have a third magpie in a second aviary at the moment. He's one of this year's young and was used in a Larsen trap. His wing feathers have been cut to about 1cm long, so he's a guest of our household until he moults new feathers next year.

Living with a corvid has given me a huge appreciation for their intelligence and character. I hate seeing the wild ones raiding blackbird nests, but they have a right to live too, and according to Tim Birkhead's book on magpies, only 11% of their diet is vertebrate material. I don't think they do as much damage to songbird populations as they're made out to do.

Finally, some like minded people! I love magpies, they are so handsome looking and bursting with character. I used to have one who would sit amongst the ivy on an old stone barn near my bedroom window, chattering away for hours. I don't care what anyone says, I love the sounds they make. They sound like they're laughing and I think it's wonderful. This one used to have a flutey whistled song too, I loved it so much. It disappeared after summer a couple of years ago, never to return. There used to be lots of them all around, they would get up to their antics on the neighbours' roofs. Now I'm lucky if I see one in a blue moon around here, they all seem to have dispersed over the last couple of years.