The Grating Magpie

Some sounds really set my nerves on edge. One is the sound of magpies in spring and summer.

Their harsh, grating cackle makes me think of machine gun fire.

With that thought comes an association of magpies with viciousness and murder.

Many's the early summer morning when I've awoken to the sound of that cackle and the subsequent squawks of panic, desperation and fear from other, smaller birds as their myriad babies face butchery at the sharp beaks of raiding magpies.

Yes, I know that's anthropomorphic, sentimental, irrational twaddle on my part, and that I - a grown man - should be ashamed of myself for thinking like that.

Still, waking up to the deeply unpleasant sound of that little local life-and-death struggle always get my day off to a bad start.

And it gets worse.

My neighbours, looking through their upstairs window, may have seen me sprinting out of the back door from time to time, waving my arms wildly at some bemused magpie in a tree in the hope of scaring it off and saving some ickle baby blackbird from a fate-precisely-the-same-as-death.

Of course, magpies are sharply predatory at that time of year because they have their own ickle babies to feed.

It's nature, red in beak and talon. It's the circle of life. So, hey, Hakuna Matata.

I know that. I appreciate that. It goes without saying (though I've just said it.)

Plus, though magpies sound about as sweet on the ear as me performing karaoke, my golly gosh, what beautiful birds they are! Really, truly beautiful. Not merely white and black but with iridescent coats of many colour - especially when caught in flattering sunlight.

Full of cheek and intelligence too, charm even. No wonder people used to keep them as pets.

And a friend of mine is far from alone in saluting magpies whenever she sees one. "Aye aye, captain", she says.

Oh yes - "One for sorrow, two for joy". Two magpies = joy. So not just sorrow then.

Such thoughts rambled to mind after listening to Sir David Attenborough giving Radio 4's Tweet of the Day today.

He echoed my own imagery, describing the sound of magpies as "a fusillade of raucous chattering".

He also noted that, since they stopped being persecuted, magpie numbers have risen sharply.

That's something I can see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears. That some roosts can contain a hundred magpies doesn't surprise me either. Local gatherings in Morecambe can amass at least a couple of dozen of the devils (and, yes, I've tried to count them).

A good news story for magpies then.

Not so good a news story though for many of my garden birds (despite what Chris Packham says!) and I feel deeply ambivalent about it.

I sometimes toy with the thought that magpies should be persecuted again - or culled, to put it less pejoratively.

Are our garden birds being decimated by them? Don't they need protecting? Oughtn't we to redress the growing imbalance? Shouldn't we exercise our 'stewardship' and act to keep the circle of life from becoming magpie-shaped?

Oh, I can hear the Chris Packham inside my head saying 'Magpies are fab. If you want to blame anything, blame cats'. And, yep, the Chris Packham inside my head would be right about. (Cull cats then? Perish the thought!)

Magpies and blackbird, cats and Chris Packham (perhaps) can all be seen sitting on fences. So ought I to join them on the magpie issue then? Should I suppress all thoughts of controlling the numbers of magpies?

Dunno.

An interesting nugget of trivia by the way, courtesy of David Attenborough, is that an early version of the name 'magpie' was apparently 'maggot pie' perhaps derived from "their delight in probing cowpats or carrion for maggots."