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Pest or guest of the month

This monthly selection offers a description of some of Warriston's beasty inhabitants and advice on how to live with them organically. Find more in our Pest or Guest archive

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August 2018 — Magpies

These striking black and white birds, with tails as long as their bodies, shimmering blue in the sunlight, are often seen around the site. Singly, in pairs, or in gangs, they make their presence felt, as, particularly at this time of year, they can be seen mobbing smaller songbirds.

During the summer they mainly eat caterpillars, spiders, worms, beetles and flies, and in the winter, fruit, berries and household scraps, but they also eat carrion throughout the year and have been known to kill small mammals. They are scavengers and predators and during spring, when they are feeding their young, they raid nests of songbirds for eggs and baby birds.

Recently a plotholder on the east side reported the peace and quiet of a Sunday afternoon at the allotment shattered by the desperate screams and attempts of a pair of blackbirds to keep a pair of determined magpies from raiding their nest. For more than an hour the blackbirds fought off attempts by the predators – at this time of year, they are truly pests.

Some magpie facts

• Magpie numbers have quadrupled in Britain during the last 30 years, due to the amount of roadkill carrion on the roads

 

• Pairs mate for life, and have their own territory. Non-breeding birds travel more widely in small gangs

 

• They are considered to be one of the most intelligent birds, and are said to be able to recognise themselves in a mirror

 

• According to the RSPB, when food is plentiful they will hide food they have collected by digging small holes, depositing the food and covering with leaves or stones

 

• They aren’t known as “thieving magpies” for nothing. They have a reputation for loving bright, shiny objects and will swoop in to steal them. So beware - don’t leave your sparkly jewellery unattended on your plot!

Don't wear diamonds on your plot when magpies are at large
Photo: Tony Hisgett

• Magpies are surrounded by superstition, and seeing one on its own is deemed to be unlucky, as in the old rhyme:
  

One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret, never to be told

• The old rural tradition of raising your hat or saluting a lone magpie is said to guard against the bad luck of seeing it. In other parts of the world, however, magpies are not associated with bad luck – in China the magpie’s song is said to bring happiness and good luck