I've worked for the RSPB for over 23 years and throughout that period we have had people saying that magpies should be culled. And of course they can be, and in many places they are! The magpie is one of the few species that can be despatched (with a few conditions attached) without a specific licence.
And there's no doubt that magpies have become commoner - thanks to landfill sites providing them with food, milder winters, a big reduction in the illegal use of poisoned baits, the number of released pheasants that end up as carrion on the roads and probably farming practices such as silage-making favouring them too.
And there's no doubt that magpies eat eggs and young birds of many many species, from pheasants and partridges to blackbirds and song thrushes. But, as David Gibbons, our Head of Science, was pointing out on Radio 4's Farming Today early this morning, this is what magpies have always done - it's their niche, it's how they survive in a difficult world. Just as the blackbirds whose eggs the magpies take have been tearing earthworms apart and the song thrushes have battered snails to death on rocks, so too do magpies take their toll of a range of songbirds and gamebirds.
So I don't think we should demonise magpies for their way of life - we'll never see a vegetarian magpie and there's no point hoping for it. But it is worth wondering whether without magpies we would see more birds in the countryside. Well, there probably would be more pheasants and partridges available in the autumn to be shot - which is why the gamekeeper who lets too many magpies survive is not doing his job - but the science does not support the idea that there would be lots more songbirds if magpies were culled. Several studies have looked at this question and none has indicted the magpie (nor, may I say, the sparrowhawk). Our friends and colleagues at the British Trust for Ornithology are updating these analyses and it'll be interesting to see whether the magpie gets acquitted again or not. I'll let you know through this blog when the results are available.
And by the way - magpies are gorgeous birds. If they were rare we'd be queuing up to get a glimpse of one!
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Love them and hate them, their colour and flight is spectacular. But oh! when i see them with baby bird in beak squeeking with fear... on the other hand i didn't feel that way when the sparrowhawk sat on the lawn eating a blackbird, is that because it's a rarer sight after all i see magpies every day?