And what happens when the population grows too large for the food supply to sustain?? Nature always balances out things eventually, not our place to intrude, let her who knows best do her work.
I Love Magpies
- Thread starter treadlightly
- Start date
Aye but by then there are no other wee birds around to come back 
and all we'll be feeding and encouraging are the rats, the magpies and the squirrels
It's 'nature', but we've (as Harvestman adroitly hinted) distorted it and are doing a pitiful job of keeping any balance.
Too many rats, too many squirrels, too many pigeons though they're being herried too by too many magpies, too many deer....too many of us too right enough, but I don't see a human cull going down well.
In the end it might not matter, because life is simply a miniscule blip in the history of this planet, but for the present, I'd rather prefer my wee bit of to be healthily diverse.
M
and all we'll be feeding and encouraging are the rats, the magpies and the squirrelsIt's 'nature', but we've (as Harvestman adroitly hinted) distorted it and are doing a pitiful job of keeping any balance.
Too many rats, too many squirrels, too many pigeons though they're being herried too by too many magpies, too many deer....too many of us too right enough, but I don't see a human cull going down well.
In the end it might not matter, because life is simply a miniscule blip in the history of this planet, but for the present, I'd rather prefer my wee bit of to be healthily diverse.
M
OK, I suggest all negative magpie comments plus all debate about the natural world and our place in it take place on the hate magpies thread and happy stuff here on the joys of sharing our world with such interesting companions!!
Elen Sentier
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
We don't have any of that here, Mary. We have a family of magpies in the bottom hedge, the young ones recently fledged and are still hanging about with their squeaky calls. We also have a mass of songbirds of all sorts incling a squabble of about 30 sparrows, a dozen goldfinches, other finches, loads of tits, dunnock, blackbirds, thrushes, and lots more. We also have lots of jackdaws, rooks and a few crows. And a resident buzzard pair. Kites and peregrines overfly us regulalry, and a sparrowhawk regularly uses the garden to hunt. owls use the garden regularly too. What's going on in your neck of the woods then? Ours is just fine, with magpies. Oh and we don't have (and never have had) the moth problem you suffer from using sheep fleece in the garden ... like what my nuncle taught me back in the 50s
Just for Treadlightly, here's a picture of a magpie that I found on Flickr and liked. Not my shot, and all credits etc to the photographer.
Aye but by then there are no other wee birds around to come back
It's 'nature', but we've (as Harvestman adroitly hinted) distorted it and are doing a pitiful job of keeping any balance.
Too many rats, too many squirrels, too many pigeons though they're being herried too by too many magpies, too many deer....too many of us too right enough, but I don't see a human cull going down well.
In the end it might not matter, because life is simply a miniscule blip in the history of this planet, but for the present, I'd rather prefer my wee bit of to be healthily diverse.
M
I understand where you're coming from Mary, but we are also all part of that big natural web and we too will end up being culled one way or another, ( just look at Dan Brown's latest book! lol)..seriously though I do think the human race is growing exponentially and the earth can't sustain it, all things in balance, and nature will decide the outcome whether we belive it or not.
Elen we too have a huge range of wee birds, but they're being reduced by not just the sparrowhawks (and the kestrels?) but by the too numerous magpies as well. I know the woodpeckers take some and that their numbers are growing too, but as other bird numbers seem to be slowly declining the magpies are multiplying year on year.
Wool on a garden encourages something to eat it. That's nature too. As more wee moths survive and want to lay eggs, they'll find your carefully stored woollens if you're not 'very' careful. It only needs one good year for them to become a real problem. Your family must have been doing very well back in the 50's to be able to afford to waste wool as a garden mulch. I know that even the dags soaked and used for fertilizer were washed and spun up with the kemp to make rug wool.
Wool does well sodden wet; I have fished wriggling knots of tubifex worms out of the dags fleece bucket before now, to spin the wool for such a purpose.
I live next to a woodland; we get moths here that look like they've got fur and horns Right enough, we get bats too
When the magpies first appeared I found them fascinating but two became five, and the next year five (since the juveniles help rear the next year's young) became eight. The next year there were 13, this year there are 23.
It's too many.
Mary
Sorry Treadlightly; we've rather taken your thread adrift
M
Wool on a garden encourages something to eat it. That's nature too. As more wee moths survive and want to lay eggs, they'll find your carefully stored woollens if you're not 'very' careful. It only needs one good year for them to become a real problem. Your family must have been doing very well back in the 50's to be able to afford to waste wool as a garden mulch. I know that even the dags soaked and used for fertilizer were washed and spun up with the kemp to make rug wool.
Wool does well sodden wet; I have fished wriggling knots of tubifex worms out of the dags fleece bucket before now, to spin the wool for such a purpose.
I live next to a woodland; we get moths here that look like they've got fur and horns
Right enough, we get bats too When the magpies first appeared I found them fascinating
but two became five, and the next year five (since the juveniles help rear the next year's young) became eight. The next year there were 13, this year there are 23.It's too many.
Mary
Sorry Treadlightly; we've rather taken your thread adrift
M
Sorry Treadlightly; we've rather taken your thread adrift
M
That's Ok, I'm still enjoying the pic from Harvestman.
P
Passer
Guest
Not sure I love magpies
But I do have a healthy respect for them. Like most corvids they have a capacity for learning, a omnivorous diet and a group instinct, which in turn makes them successful.
Now that the RSPB have finally acknowledged the possible damage birds do to bird populations, should they not bear some of the criticism we seem to reserve for Magpies?
But I do have a healthy respect for them. Like most corvids they have a capacity for learning, a omnivorous diet and a group instinct, which in turn makes them successful.
Now that the RSPB have finally acknowledged the possible damage birds do to bird populations, should they not bear some of the criticism we seem to reserve for Magpies?
P
Passer
Guest
jimbo75
Settler
I've always considered myself quite a rational person, but was long prone to the magpie poem above. Until I bought a house in Bristol with a nest of noisy magpies at the bottom of the garden, which soon cured my superstitions. I like them. They used to dive bomb my cat a lot, and she's loathed birds ever since - but that's the way of things.
It's maybe changed now (although I doubt it), but London zoo used to be a very depressing place. Other than the massive baggy and frankly silly looking aviary Prince Charlie boy designed, all the bird cages are far too small. In one of these was some exotic African magpie. It looked precisely like a domestic magpie - for all I know it was, not many people would know the difference. Anyway, this bird saw me looking at it, trying to work out why the hell it was in there, and it gave me a stick. It was quite a small stick, and there was a small gap at the bottom of the mesh through which it could poke the stick through and quite deliberately place it on the ground outside the cage. Then it looked up at me sideways the way birds do, made direct eye contact: "Look! A stick"
Fortunately for me, I didn't have a pair of wire cutters in my pocket otherwise I'd probably have got into trouble.
It's maybe changed now (although I doubt it), but London zoo used to be a very depressing place. Other than the massive baggy and frankly silly looking aviary Prince Charlie boy designed, all the bird cages are far too small. In one of these was some exotic African magpie. It looked precisely like a domestic magpie - for all I know it was, not many people would know the difference. Anyway, this bird saw me looking at it, trying to work out why the hell it was in there, and it gave me a stick. It was quite a small stick, and there was a small gap at the bottom of the mesh through which it could poke the stick through and quite deliberately place it on the ground outside the cage. Then it looked up at me sideways the way birds do, made direct eye contact: "Look! A stick"
Fortunately for me, I didn't have a pair of wire cutters in my pocket otherwise I'd probably have got into trouble.
