Bird of the Month
Last summer, I witnessed a sudden avian drama on a London pavement. A chattering magpie ( Pica pica) was trying to kill a fledgling starling. My arrival sent the magpie flying, but then a cat shot in to finish the job. It had to be chased off before the starling could be caught and secreted at the heart of the thickest available bush. Michaela Strachan’s advice on Springwatch, that empathy with the prey must not demonise the predator, went out the window. How much easier and longer many songbirds’ lives would be without cats and magpies.
Both have immemorially attracted superstition, the magpie most fancifully. ‘Pied’ or ‘mixed’ (usually black and white) meant it was cursed with a drop of blood from Satan, prince of darkness. It was also said to have refused shelter in Noah’s Ark, preferring to chatter and swear as the world drowned. We still salute the magpie, singly or grouped, to ward off bad luck or bring good. The old rhyme persists in many variations, the insistent ‘sorrow’ because magpies are monogamous:
One for sorrow, two for joy, Three for a girl, four for a boy.
Or: One for sorrow, two for mirth, Three for a funeral, four for a birth.
Or from Ireland: One for sorrow, two for joy, Three for a kiss, four for a boy, Five for silver, six for gold, Seven for a secret never told. Eight for a letter from over the sea, Nine for a lover as true as can be.
There are a million magpies in the British Isles – the Irish blame their introduction on Cromwell – which often means their ‘mischiefs’ outnumber any ditty. One reason is a lack of gamekeepers – who controlled them to near-extinction. Even royal parks were keepered; so a pair was not seen in inner London till 1960. Now they are everywhere.
March is when they nest-build, often occupying an abandoned drey. This they turn into a heap the size of a small bonfire, the female sitting at the heart of it, the tip of her tail sometimes visible. Their beauty is only rivalled among crows by the jay; close up, distant black and white are transformed into mantle, wings and tail of lustrous blue, emerald, bronze, pink and purple. The magpie was the bird of joy for China’s last (Manchu) imperial dynasty; and the god of an ancient cult in Poitou. It has a crow’s intelligence. Ovid noted its gift for mimicry, and science has proved its rare capability of mirror recognition. Rossini’s opera The Thieving Magpie immortalised the reputation for ‘stealing’; even car keys have been found in a nest. ‘Mag’, abbreviation of Margaret, is slang for a chatterbox; but the magpie’s chattering might also be a death rattle. The magpies in Picardy Are more than I can tell. They flicker down the dusty roads And cast a magic spell On the men who march through Picardy, Through Picardy to hell. T P Cameron Wilson from Magpies in Picardy