THE JURY is still out on the question of who killed Cock Robin, but I see that a former British environment minister, Michael Heseltine, has added himself to the list of suspects.
In an interview with a bird magazine, Heseltine admits that legislation he introduced in 1981 has led to an explosion in magpie numbers at the expense of songbirds, particularly the skylark and the thrush. The law made it harder to cull “nuisance” birds, and he fears that one particular nuisance, the magpie, has taken advantage, tripling its British population in the past 30 years.
Not everybody accepts Heseltine’s confession, or the magpie’s implied guilt. Although the bird has few friends, experts say the evidence against it – specifically about stealing eggs and nestlings – is mostly anecdotal. The numbers of some songbirds are stable, they point out; while those declining include the tree sparrow and starling, which are less vulnerable to magpies because they nest in holes.
Maybe the magpie’s presumed involvement whenever smaller birds disappear is just part of the popular prejudice that has always dogged the former. But I wonder if, in the case of Michael Heseltine, there might be a further complication.
According to Brewer’s Dictionary, magpies used to be called simply “pies”, from their piebald colours. Then, around the 16th century, it became the fashion to attach human names to birds: “Tom” Tit, “Robin” Redbreast, etc. For some reason, alliteration was abandoned in the case of the pie, which instead was christened “Margaret”.
Possibly, this was because Margaret was a nickname for gossipy women. And of course pies have long been famous for their chatter, a fact recognised by their collective noun: “a tiding”. Bad news was believed to be their speciality. Hence Shakespeare’s Henry VI: “Dogs howl’d, and hideous tempest shook down trees/The raven rook’d her on the chimney’s top/And chattering pies in dismal discords sung.” In any case, Margaret-pie eventually became corrupted to “Maggot-pie”, then shortened to the version we know now. And maybe this is the root of Heseltine’s objection to the birds.
As a left-wing Tory, he was long at odds with another well-known Margaret. Ultimately, indeed, he was central to the attempt to get rid of her and her dismal discords. And although the cull was successful in the short-term, it also cost him his chances of succeeding to the leadership. Her hatchlings had multiplied and they defeated him. So maybe now when he sees a magpie hovering around his back garden, he can’t help taking it personally.
MAGPIES ARE never far from my back garden these days, but unless they’re refugees from Thatcher’s Britain – like the New Age travellers of the 1980s and 1990s – I can’t blame Michael Heseltine.
In fact, contrary to anecdotal evidence, the birds are not thriving this side of the Irish Sea to anything like the same extent as in Britain. On the contrary, in Birdwatch Ireland’s latest annual garden survey, the magpie actually fell two places in the top 10, to number seven. Ahead of it in the pecking order were the robin – No 1 for the fourth successive year – the blackbird, the blue tit, the great tit, the chaffinch, and even the coal-tit: up two places from No 8.
In my back garden, by contrast, robins and tits are rarely if ever seen now. The magpie is firmly top of the local hit parade. And I partly blame our elderly cat.
She’s not even our cat. If there’s a proprietorial relationship, it’s the other way around. She was left behind by a migrating neighbour a few years ago and, after an exhaustive selection process, eventually chose us as the softest touches on the road. These winter mornings, within seconds of my switching on the kitchen light, the cat is pressing her face against the glass in the back door, drooling, so that I can’t enjoy my own breakfast guilt-free until she has hers.
She expects, and usually gets, three meals a day now. And a while ago, resentful at the inroads she was making on our fridge, I resorted to buying cat-food. Since when, it has become apparent that the wretched animal has the gall to have preferences about which brand she eats. I’ve noticed, for example, that she is not one of the eight out of 10 cats that allegedly prefer Whiskas. She never finishes that. Whereas she can’t get enough of Lidl’s own-brand, even though it’s cheaper.
The accidental beneficiaries of her new diet, meanwhile, are the magpies, which will eat anything. Not that they needed any encouragement to loiter in our garden. But now when the cat dines, they perch on a nearby wall waiting for her to finish, chattering. You can almost hear them say: “He bought Whiskas again – we’re in luck!”
They’re not quite aggressive enough yet to tuck in alongside the cat, although she’s about 95 in feline years, so they could probably get away with. But as soon as she turns tail, they’re in. I’m providing the cheeky buggers with breakfast, lunch, and occasionally supper. And needless to say, they don’t even sing for it.