Magpies

[peter]

I cannot recall seeing many magpies as a child, now I see them everywhere, urban, suburban and bucolic.
Can any members of slightly more life experience than I, fiftyish, remember over the years how common they were?


As an aside I find thrushes to he the opposite, used to watch and listen to them as child and cannot now recall the last time I did so more recently.

[macmac]

I seldom see thrushes
I see magpies everyday in our garden and while I know they have a bad name ,I have seen them steal a blackbirds eggs and bury them under our trees I love watching them strut around and let's face it they are just being magpies.

[Johnboy]

This may appal some of you but by pursuing a policy of shooting every Magpie that enters my territory I have an amazing selection of other birds.
I think that I have proved that the RSPB are wrong in what they have said
that a cull of Magpies would make not the slightest difference to other birds in a particular area.
It was a different story when their beloved Avocets were continually robbed of their eggs by Black Headed and other Gulls.
The RSPB then pursued a policy of rolling the nests of any gull in the vicinity!
JB.

[Marigold]

This may appal some of you but by pursuing a policy of shooting every Magpie that enters my territory I have an amazing selection of other birds.
I think that I have proved that the RSPB are wrong in what they have said
that a cull of Magpies would make not the slightest difference to other birds in a particular area.
It was a different story when their beloved Avocets were continually robbed of their eggs by Black Headed and other Gulls.
The RSPB then pursued a policy of rolling the nests of any gull in the vicinity!
JB.

Bravo. Johnoy! Bravo! I have been banging my head against the RSPB and others inaccuracies on various boards. Their surveys say that there is no overall increase in magpie numbers and that it is cats who kill songbirds and who ought to be shot. HUH!

Hate magpies and our wee dog is trained to "see them off" when they start. Once had a kitten taken by one and their noise and nasty ways .. words fail..I keep old pans to hand and when they come near I bang them loud and long.

[glallotments]

Must admit we have magpies and lots of other species of garden bird in our garden.

From time to time the piles of feathers found are not the work of magpies maybe sparrowhawks but we do have cats prowling the garden which are sent on their way in a humane fashion.

It's not just for the birds benefit but I never garden without gloves any more since trying to break up a clump of soil and finding it wasn't what I thought. We find piles of cat mess and even sick in our garden and plants scratched up or flattened by being used as a cat bed or plants killed by cat urine - you can smell it.

Now don't get me wrong I am an animal lover but if my dog caused as much of a problem I'm sure I'd never get away with it behaving in the same way!

Sorry for the rant and I don't want to offend cat lovers as I'm sure you are all sensible owners and if I come across a cat that isn't in my garden I promise you I'll pet it as much as anyone!

[FelixLeiter]

The RSPB's standpoint is that magpies have always been part of the British ecology, long before we arrived. My particular view is that there are more magpies around these days (although I have no evidence for this) which suggests to me a deeper malaise in the food chain which I rather think Tiddles has a lot to do with. I've never seen a cat knacker a magpie nor any other Corvid (they are far too canny to be caught), but they seem to regularly rip apart songbirds. Where I work, there are no cats and lots of songbirds, but there are also lots of magpies.

[Marigold]

See what I mean? Blame the cats! My two bring in a few but mostly rodents. Oh and one of mine did catch a magpie. The cats are black and white too!!

[glallotments]

See what I mean? Blame the cats! My two bring in a few but mostly rodents. Oh and one of mine did catch a magpie. The cats are black and white too!!

I'm mainly blaming the cats for the mess in my garden - I did mention that I thought sparrowhawks were the cause of the piles of feathers.

[Parsons Jack]

Magpies are successful because like other corvids, they adapt easily. They aren't fussy what they eat. I've even seen them trying to copy starlings jumping up and hanging on the the feeders in the garden.

Personally, I think they're great. Very entertaining. Beautiful colours too. If you catch the light right, the black changes to purple or green. We have loads of magpies around here, as well as numerous song birds. They are not alone in taking eggs or young either, as the Great Spotted Woodpecker is partial to that as well. Are we supposed to shoot them as well?

Of far more significance to the song bird decline, is the rate of hedgerow destruction. In 1945 there were estimated to be about 500,000 miles of hedgerow in the UK. Over the next 50 years around half of that was destroyed. Even now hedgerows are still disappearing. Coupled with the amount of building land that used to have one house and a large garden, now being used for multiple buildings, that's even more trees and bushes lost. The property next to me is a holiday home with quite a large garden. The family only visit a few times a year. In the garden there were just two large bushes, which the sparrows used to roost in. Both of those bushes have now been grubbed out so the sparrows have had to move on.

What right have we, as human beings, to decide which birds live or die. It's human interference that has caused most of the problems in the first place.

[Monika]

I think what's distressing about magpie predation is that they take out nests of songbirds, thus destroying a whole clutch rather than just one bird, like a cat would. Having said that, I don't agree with interfering with nature and agree that we should let it run its course. Cats are pets and really have no natural rank in nature.

There has been a lot of discussion around here about the attacks of red kites on waders, particularly young ones, on the moors. Although red kites are supposed to scavenge carrion, with agriculture being so clean nowadays (no hiding away of fallen stock or dead lambs, everything to be taken away), the birds are predating live oystercatchers, lapwings, redshanks, dunlins etc on the moors, it appears. I have no personal experience of it, so I remain neutral on the matter, but I can see that could be worrying.

[glallotments]

They are not alone in taking eggs or young either, as the Great Spotted Woodpecker is partial to that as well. Are we supposed to shoot them as well?

Just recently I was talking to a RSPB guy at one of their reserves and he said that woodpeckers are a much bigger problem to song birds than magpies.

The example he gave was how woodpeckers predate nest boxes. Apparently once a woodpecker locates a nest box with chicks it will hammer an opening in the base of the box and take the chicks that way rather than from the hole at the front. If the woodpecker doesn't take all the chicks in one visit it will come back for remaining chicks too.

Maybe the problem is with us in that our activities are often responsible for changing the balance of nature.

A magpie is unable to do this and has to wait til the chicks are fledged.

[Johnboy]

Hi Sue,
That is a typical response from an RSPB official. On reserves where they have nest box schemes certainly GS Woodpeckers can be a problem.
What strikes me is that the normal person in the street has not the foggiest idea of how nature operates and this gives the RSPB carte blanche at putting what they think and people will believe then because they of who they are. They abuse this position!
I have nest boxes and I have GS Woodpeckers and LS Woodpeckers but I have yet to have any nest boxes destroyed by these birds. On the other hand I have had countless nests of song birds destroyed by Magpies until I started my shooting policy. I now have a property that abounds in all manner of song birds.
I was getting 12 Magpies at a time and they simply destroyed everything they could find. In the last year I have shot I think 16 Magpies and they still appear.
If you care to compare how many GS Woodpeckers that are around by comparison to Magpie this might just give you a clue as to how wrong the RSPB are. I have yet to see 12 Woodpeckers on my plot!
I have a barn full of Cats and they very seldom predate on birds because there are too many Rabbits and Mice and other vermin to keep them happy.
There is a great difference between Urban areas to Rural areas with the distribution of birds.
JB.

[glallotments]

Hi Sue,
I have a barn full of Cats and they very seldom predate on birds because there are too many Rabbits and Mice and other vermin to keep them happy.
There is a great difference between Urban areas to Rural areas with the distribution of birds.
JB.

I suppose though that in suburban areas where lots of people have a pet cat or two and there isn't the distraction of a rabbit to chase the effect of cats is different too.

[Marigold]

Cannot blame woodpeckers in Ireland as there are none..

We protect our newly planted beds from cats by simply laying 2 " chicken wire over the top. The plants grow through it and cats will not use that part...Cats have to do these things...Easy to protect. When they see a new bed of course they think we have dug it for their use. One of ours started when I turned my back to fetch the netting.

[MikA]

I have not seen or heard Magpies since the start of the year so locally I think they haven't done well here. We do have lots of Jackdaws and several Crows. Unfortunately I haven't seen or heard any Song Thrushes since early spring whereas 2 years ago they were regularly smashing the snails on our concrete paths. I wonder if the hot, dry spring and a lack of snails is to blame.

This may appal some of you but by pursuing a policy of shooting every Magpie that enters my territory...................
JB.

We live in a 1970's estate so the houses are well spaced and decent sized but not large gardens so shooting would be seriously frowned upon.

See what I mean? Blame the cats! My two bring in a few but mostly rodents. Oh and one of mine did catch a magpie. The cats are black and white too!!

I favour the cat theory for lack of song birds having owned cats in the past and experienced what they bring back. It only requires one good hunting/climbing cat in the neighbourhood to decimate populations. Of our 2, the male was an excellent bird catcher (he went further afield) and his smaller sister specialised in mice having phenomenal patience.