It would probably head the list of least charming bird in an unpopularity poll. It is the magpie; seems to have no friends or admirers, though it is one of our handsomest birds. Its main colour scheme is elegant black and white, but if you get up close you find a lovely bluish/purplish sheen. Its normal sound is a "chack-chack", but David Cabot tells us that sometimes it can be heard in a subtle song consisting of "babbling notes interspersed with whistling and pipping [piping?] sounds." News to most of us is that magpies are comparatively recent arrivals, the first flock or group of them being noticed in Wexford in 1676. They arrived in Dublin only in 1852. You cannot fail to notice them, visually or aurally. One of their big domed nests was for years a noisy centre in a Dublin suburban garden. Now it is empty. Nobody shot or scared them off. Perhaps local, very active, hawks moved them. Eamon de Buitlear thinks their reputation for robbing other birds of eggs and nestlings is exaggerated. Slugs and other small creatures and plants form a good part of their diet, while urban magpies have an ever-increasing source of food in the contents of modern plastic bin-bags.
There are a lot of them about, an estimated 320,000 breeding pairs. And they seem to be more urban these days. They do not emigrate and are said to tend to remain within a kilometre or two of the natal nest. Lord Grey of Falloden does not include them in his book The Charm of Birds. Interesting, most would say, but hardly charming. Yet they might touch your heart in some circumstances, as this.
A man and his wife were out walking and heard magpies squabbling. One of them, attacked by the rest, fell down onto the man's shoulder. He held it and waited until it had recovered and then launched it into the air again. It fell into the grass. He picked it up and placed it on a bed of pine needles under the trees. They walked on. Ten minutes later the same bird was circling round them. But the aggressors were still after it, pecking at it as it landed on a branch. When the pair got home, the husband said he was sorry he hadn't brought the bird back with him to safety. It might now be dead. His wife answered: "Man should not intervene in the life of a magpie." Do you agree? Y