Beauty and the beast
Were magpies building early?
Were they were following the strategy of the Eleonora’s falcon and timing their breeding to coincide with easy pickings supplied by their feathered friends?
The Eleonora’s, a Mediterranean species, is often cited as an example of ‘enlightened’ synchronicity in nature because, while other birds produce young in spring and summer, it delays breeding until September.
Thus, its chicks hatch late and when their demand for food is at its most pressing, migrants from Northern Europe crossing to North Africa provide a steady stream of airborne dinners passing the nesting sites on Mediterranean cliffs.
Was it possible that magpies were planning ahead so that when they had hungry fledglings to feed, the nests of smaller birds would provide convenient larders?
I think not. When the pressure is on, magpies will raid other birds’ nests, but no research shows that they nest especially early for this reason. Their pillaging period is short; they are seasonal marauders rather than serial predators.
Magpies seem to like to build close to roads, particularly back roads. Roadkill supplements their diet anywhere there is motor traffic, but on the byroads it can better be garnered without risking life and wing.
While these harlequin crows must number amongst our most beautiful resident birds, they are not universally admired. Home-owners who have seen a magpie raid on a songbird’s nest in their garden may fail to appreciate the plumage of the raiders. Magpies are regular visitors to our garden and we tolerate them, indeed welcome them, for their beauty. I quite often see one striding purposefully past the French window of my work-room. Sometimes, for a split second, the sunlight glancing on the lacquer red black shoulders bathes them in cobalt blue, emerald green or old gold.
They are clever birds and sometimes entertaining, albeit when engaged in devilment of some kind.
I recall watching a magpie pair baiting our old springer spaniel flaked out on the lawn on an especially hot summer day. One bird would alight behind her and pull her tail. When she lifted her head to snap at it, the other would alight nearby and grab her ear. Turn as quickly as she might, she could never catch either. She ended up, in fact, chasing her own tail until finally she gave in and trundled indoors to get a bit of peace. When our heron — which now visits us only briefly and on alternate days (clearly, it has duties of courting, nest-building or even egg-sitting to attend to) leaves a defrosted fish in the shallow stream while it goes to the pond to drink, a magpie will sometimes swoop from the trees and grab it, even though it is submerged in a few centimetres of water.
While the magpies add colour and entertainment to the winter garden, now, in the breeding season, I fear for the issue of the small birds that come to the bird table and nest in the foliage around about.
The fledglings of blackbirds, thrushes, robins and other garden species typically spend a day on the ground before their wings strengthen and they are skilled enough to evade predators. Magpies are then a serious threat — but a much greater threat, of course, are the cats that prowl in the undergrowth throughout the year and the vandal hedge-cutters who lay waste not only the habitat but the nests.
The nesting season will soon begin. Happily, environmental awareness has risen dramatically in recent years but it is to be hoped, once again, that county councils and individual landowners will respect the Wildlife Act which states “It shall be an offence... to cut, grub, burn or otherwise destroy, during the period beginning on the 1st day of March and ending on the 31st day of August in any year, any vegetation growing on any land not then cultivated. . . or any vegetation growing in any hedge or ditch.”
There are, of course, exemptions. We are not forbidden to trim the bushes in our gardens. But then, most gardeners are very aware of the importance of the birds.
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