VIEWPOINT
This month, after spotting a mischief of magpies, our columnist is reminded just how much he dislikes their stiff-legged arrogance
I saw five magpies together the other day. Five! Doubtless one reader or another will be able to do better. But it is the largest number I have ever seen in one place. I am not a great fan of magpies, having watched a pair of them hop along the top of a hedge, dragging young songbirds out of their nests and dumping them on the ground to die.
But of all garden birds, they are the most self-important and there is something about their stiff-legged arrogance that positively commands your attention far more effectively than, say, the pigeons, crows, jays, doves or even the hordes of parakeets of equivalent size that our gardens must now endure.
The magpie is a cross between Shakespeare’s Malvolio and Trollope’s Obadiah Slope – and it is not just because of the distinctive prebendal dress. Everyone agrees they are highly intelligent; if you thought your survival depended upon it, you’d be an enemy of songbirds too. Yet however bright they may be, their presence is still unwelcome. Each spring I used to put out a Larsen trap – atrap with a live bird as decoy – to capitalise upon their absurdly overdeveloped sense of property rights. That is, until my teenage daughter discovered it. I’ve never met a bird-watcher who objected, though, for the magpie is a menace. The former Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, was the last politician to appreciate the charm of birds, if not necessarily magpies. There’s a rich history of the politician bird-watcher: the author of the 1927 book The Charm of Birds was his more distinguished Cabinet predecessor, Lord Grey of Fallodon.
Ken once told me he had been lying under a hedge, looking through his binoculars, when, uninvited, his wife Gillian plumped herself down beside him in his impromptu hide. What on earth was he watching?
‘There it is,’ exclaimed our hero, in a stage whisper, as Gillian focused her bins on a small bro
