just to say hello and stick up for magpies

found this site by accident when looking for pics sculptures etc of magpies and was horrified to see that people want to exterminate what i think is a beautiful bird and have been lucky to have them living in a tree near me and making periodic visits to my garden ( i live in pretty much central london) and always cheer me up with their call and antics, we humans donot have a great track record  we are wrecking the planet and should certainly not be trying deliberately to wipe out species we get rid of loads every year normally. anyone else out there share my view of a much maligned bird.??

Hello and welcome Starshine - We had a pair of Magpies nest in our Scots Pine this year and they raised two young ones.   They gave us great pleasure despite their attacks on the local Jackdaw brigade also coming to the garden for food for their young ones.  Our answer was we left them all to it until it got a bit ot of hand and then opened the door and shouted - thats enough! and the fight was over.   The funniest part was when the babies started to feed in the garden they thought they were big and strong like their parents only to find that everyone bullied them and pushed them away from the food but mum and dad hid snacks in the shrubbery for them and off they toddle to feed in peace.  All is calm again now mum and dad are still around but the young ones have moved on and there will be no more squabbles until next spring when I hope they choose our garden to nest in again.   Their plumage is magnificent  - we watched them all thru their moult when they looked most odd and they are now our beautiful birds again. 

Hi there and welcome.

I to like magpies, my dad had a talking magpie which he found injured when he was a boy growing up in liverpool

I think they are lovely looking birds and you always find them chasing each other on rooftops.

Hi Starshine,

Welcome to the forum.

We get visited by magpies every year, they often come in making a racket.  I wouldn't want to see them gone and I personally would never do anything to harm them.  However, our next door neighbour has a rather large Conifer at the bottom of their garden, the majority of it hangs over ours.  This tree is literally a "block of flats" for the birds during the breeding months! blackbrds, wood pigeons, tits and starlings all nest in there.   What breaks my heart though is when the magpies do their dawn raids and literally descend on this tree, chasing off the birds to get to the eggs.  Some days I'm literally out in garden clapping hands and banging on the shed roof to try and scare them off as you can't help be moved by their cries and those of desparate parents trying to protect their eggs or newly hatched.

They are beautiful birds though and as you say, the colouring of their feathers are wonderful.  

Hi Starshine and welcome from me also. I have a solitary magpie here (not good if you go by the old poem) and I love him as he relentlessly teases next door''s cat by dangling his long tail just out of her reach! Top bird, in my opinion.

hi kezmo firstly apologies for not mentioning you on my latest post, i plead old age as the reason. thankyou for your reply and i've answered it in my newpost hope it is of some use to you   cheers starshine

Welcome to the forum Starshine! I really like magpies! In fact, I greatly appreciate all of the Corvid family! They are all so intelligent and resourceful (some might call it mischievious!).

Welcome to the forum Starshine, I'm another pro-magpier as well.  They are beautiful birds, unfortunately I rarely see them up here!  They were fairly common where I used to live and I still miss them!

Hello Starshine,  I like magpies too as they are very handsome birds but  I must admit I do get tired of the racket they make at times!  We had a family visit us regularly this summer which were nesting in a large tree about four houses away.  My Mum always grumbles that they stop the little birds feeding by hogging the space at the bitd table but I am happy for them to share the food on mine as they are so beautiful.

Hi Starshine - purchased a Victorian Bird Book on Sunday - two subjects in one on one page that reminded me of your comments.  They were describing the Magpie and included a coloured plate and then made reference that many Magpies were actually caged as pets!  So we have made some progress.

Hi Starshine,

Welcome aboard.  I used to be neurotic about seeing solitary magpies (that old poem has a lot to answer for!!) but since a couple started coming into the garden I've realised that they are beautiful and fascinating creatures- I saw them ambush a woodpigeon one day, amazing too see.  From the responses to your thread, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that likes the maggies.

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.