Magpies are ***** aren’t they

In the garden yesterday morning I heard a load of squawking from small birds and looked to where they were….oh there’s a magpie.. and..oh you evil *****.  It had caught a great tit.   Nature I know but it made me upset.

It tried again several hours later but this time 20 or 30 tits mobbed it and chased it off.  Clearly this particular magpie is spending much of its time on the hunt for the fledgling small birds right now.   I hope the sod doesn’t get many more but I fear it will.

20 or 30 tits mobbed it

Ah reminds me of a holiday once… 😋

It had caught a great tit

Can’t be that great if it got caught by a magpie.

There is a reason why a Great Tit will lay 7-9 eggs every year. If they all became adults there would be some serious ecological issues.

Magpies are brilliant….. highly intelligent and with a great sense of dress.

Murderers!

They seem pretty active at the moment.

 highly intelligent and with a great sense of dress

And a beautiful singing voice

We saw one catch a small mouse in the garden, not too far from the house – it was… Quite a brutal way to go, I should think. Still, nature gonna nature, and even magpies have to eat. Quite grateful if they help clear the vermin.

Interestingly, we have a crow’s nest this spring in a tree overlooking the garden, not had that before. Magpie presence is notably reduced, and I think I saw the crows give the local sparrowhawk what-for as well.

dunno why Magpies get such a bad rap 😕 If it was a Sparrowhawk this thread would be all obsequious cooing and no mention of Evil!

Years ago my parents had an inured or sick pigeon grounded in the garden for a couple of days. Obviously it was when I took my (young at the time) kids round that the magpies decided it’s eyes look tasty.

Smart birds, we had a nest in our garden last year (didn’t fill the bird feeders!) it was quite nice seeing the young ones bouncing around. But they are quite brutal.

Used to have their own TV show once too.

I’ve never understood people ascribing emotive and judgemental terms like ‘evil’ to animals feeding themselves. Any more ‘evil’ than taking a male dairy calf from its mum and turning it into dog food so we can have milk on our cornflakes?

That’s ace Matt.

There’s a pair nest in the garden at my Mum’s house, high up in a pyracantha. We did used to have a blackbird nest in another small tree but then the magpies raided it so the blackbirds have never been back.

But the magpies are cool, they’re very smart.

I’ve never understood people ascribing emotive and judgemental terms like ‘evil’ to animals feeding themselves. Any more ‘evil’ than taking a male dairy calf from its mum and turning it into dog food so we can have milk on our cornflakes?

every magpie chick is given Ethics by Spinoza when they hatch unfortunately it’s in the Original Dutch which they can’t read so we hold it against them 😕

Early commute on bike last summer I passed a scene of horror at the end of my road… Magpie had been hit by a car and it’s body was in the road, surrounded by 4 or 5 other magpies pecking at it. I couldn’t tell if the creature was dead or injured, or whether it’s mates were trying to help it or eat it.

Basically miniature dinosaurs…

Magpies are generally nasty gits. Most corvids are highly intelligent Machiavellian bastids.

Jays get away with similar behaviour as they have a prettier dress. I like Jays (despite their shenanigans)

One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four to hear these options again

Stop putting human emotions and morals on nature.

They are incredibly impressive creatures just like Hyenas, Sharks, Crocs, etc etc i.e. the other “bad guys”.

I don’t think you can just say that a magpie is evil, it’s not really black and white

“Magpies are brilliant….. highly intelligent and with a great sense of dress.”
They inspired Ian Dury to write this

Cuckoos, they’re the real *****

every magpie chick is given Ethics by Spinoza when they hatch unfortunately it’s in the Original Dutch which they can’t read so we hold it against them

I always thought the original was written in Latin. In any case, magpies are widely considered total Kants.

99.9% of all life on Earth ends their days being eaten alive. Cheery thought.

Cuckoos, they’re the real *****

Or seagulls.

Watched a vid quite recently of one eating a pigeon, and another wolfing down an entire squirrel.

A couple of times I’ve seen magpies mobbing crows. A couple of crows sitting in a tree minding their own business and upwards of 30 magpies all shouting at them. Makes quite a racket!

Any excuse to post this

seagulls

Are some of my favourite birds. Absolute mastery of the air, a joy to watch. But yeah, nasty bastids 😁

My wife hates them, childhood trauma from when one swooped down and stole her banana!

A favourite memory is sitting at the top of Snowdon inside a cloud, with a gull gliding into the wind so it was effectively hanging motionless in the cloud in front of us. Ghostly and amazing.

Because there’s so much bird food out here the magpies are really mellow, and none of the other birds have any fear of them, it’s pretty odd to see one perched on top of a feeder while starlings and coal tits and such fly in and out to feed within pecking distance. I think they’re all pretty much cooperating, lots of food but also lots of cats so there’s no real internal competition but a fair amount of threat. And they’re gorgeous birds up close, the blue is almost metallic.

They do still mess with nests though, they did for all the pigeon eggs last year.

Regularly have a pair of them that patrol the fences in the back garden.
Its a great workout for the dog. One will jump down to the ground, he will chase it back up onto the fence, then the other one will do it. Then they laugh at him. We also have a pair of fat woodies that used to try it, but he almost caught one so they stay firmly on the fence now.

Going back to the cat thread any cats I know have a fear or respect for magpies and won’t go near them, they are like gangsters

Thanks burntembers … love how that bit of (presumably fictitious) history bookends that series.

Perfect use of music. Hard to think of many better examples in recent TV.

Perfect bird to link it all together, obvs.

That’s ace Matt.

@kelvin

A sad reason the book it is in was created:

All over the country, there are words disappearing from children’s lives. These are the words of the natural world; Dandelion, Otter, Bramble and Acorn, all gone. A wild landscape of imagination and play is rapidly fading from our children’s minds.

The Lost Words stands against the disappearance of wild childhood. It is a joyful celebration – in art and word – of nearby nature and its wonders.

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-lost-words-rediscover-our-natural-world-with-this-spellbinding-book-robert-macfarlane/1549379

Worse than that are black back gulls, saw one swoop down on a male blackbird getting worms for its young on a playing field and repeatedly smashed it into the ground and swallowed it whole, and managed to do it so fast my lurcher cross couldn’t interfere when I directed it to intervene.

Jays get away with it because there are less of them, there are plenty of magpies.  The prettier dress reinforces that feeling though I reckon.  I definitely think numbers come into it…. if it had been a fledgling Robin I’d have found that harder still.   If it takes any parakeet eggs/ young though I’m not going to be too bothered.  Similarly yes of it had been a sparrowhawk doing the kill I’d have felt much happier.

The magpies don’t bother the crows around here.  Not sure if that’s just because the crows are so huge they don’t dare, or there are plenty of other easy pickings about so no need to… but given the magpie manifesto I’m surprised.

Nothing more satisfying to shoot with an air rifle than a magpie, not least because it takes quite a bit of skill/patience to get within range, and it’s usually still a good 40 yard+ shot.

redmex

Free Member

Going back to the cat thread any cats I know have a fear or respect for magpies and won’t go near them, they are like gangsters

My cat once brought a live magpie in through a small cat flap. **** knows how as he’s a big cat and only just fits through on his own.

It was fun trying to get the bird back outside.

Choughs are also excused as they are rare. The UK ones are funny, often seen in Pembrokeshire.

I like the alpine ones as they just remind me of great days on proper mountains.

The other day I was weeding our veg patch and doing a bit of tidying. I stood up, turned around to get the rake from behind me, then turned back to where id been working and a big featherless baby crow had landed slap bang in the patch not 4 feet away! It was very much an ex baby crow. As in ceased to be. I looked up to see a red kite being mobbed by a big gang of pursuing crows, pitchforks at the ready. It must have raided a nest and plucked the chick out. I couldn’t believe it, utter mayhem as they chased it across the field

It’s not just magpies, it’s bloody wild out there