In disposition the magpie is restless, inquisitive, excitable, and loquacious. Where he is greatly persecuted by gamekeepers—as, indeed, is the case almost everywhere in England—he grows so wary that, in spite of his conspicuous colouring, it would be almost impossible to get a glimpse of him, were it not for his outbursts of irrepressible excitement and garrulity. The sight of a stoat, fox, or prowling cat will instantly cause him to forget the more dangerous keeper and his gun, and to fill the coppice with cries of alarm. The feathered inhabitants of the wood hurry from all sides to ascertain the cause of the outcry, and assist in driving out the intruder. But the keeper, too, hears; this is the opportunity he has been long watching and waiting for; and if he approaches the scene of excitement with due caution, poor beautiful Mag, dead, and shattered with shot, will soon be added to his festering trophies.
The usual sound emitted by the magpie is an excited chatter—a note with a hard, percussive sound, rapidly repeated half a dozen times. It may be compared to the sound of a wooden rattle, or to the bleating of a goat; but there is always a certain resemblance to the human voice in it, especially when the birds are unalarmed, and converse with one another in subdued tones. But it is more like the guttural voice of the negro than the white man’s voice. Their subdued chatter has sometimes produced in me the idea that I was listening to the low talking and laughing of a couple of negroes lying on their backs somewhere near. It is well known that this bird can be taught to articulate a few words.
The magpie is a notable architect, and as a rule builds his nest in a tall tree in or on the borders of a wood; sometimes in a low, isolated tree or large bush, or in the centre of a thick hedge. It is large, and formed of sticks and mud, with a hollow in the centre, plastered with mud and lined with fibrous roots; over this solid platform and nest a large dome of loosely interwoven thorny sticks is built, with a hole in the side just large enough to admit the bird.
Magpies pair for life, and the nest may serve the birds for several years, a little repairing work being bestowed on it each spring. The eggs are usually six in number, but in some cases as many as nine are laid. In colour they are pale bluish green, very thickly spotted and freckled with olive-brown, and faintly blotched with ash-colour.
The magpie may be easily tamed; even the wild birds, when not persecuted, become strongly familiar with man, and come about the house like fowls. In a state of nature he subsists on grubs, worms, snails, slugs, and various insects, and will eat any kind of animal food that offers, not excepting carrion; he also devours young birds and eggs, and is fond of ripe fruit. He is supposed to be a deadly enemy of the poultry-yard, and a stealer of pheasant and partridge chicks; but it is certain that his depredations have been greatly exaggerated.
Jackdaw.
Corvus monedula.
Crown and upper parts black with violet reflections; back of the head and nape grey; iris white; under parts dull black. Length, fourteen inches.
It is hard to pronounce which of our indigenous corvine species is the most interesting. They are all wonderful birds; and to those who have made pets of, and studied them, and know them intimately as most of us know our dogs, they appear to excel other feathered creatures in the quality of mind, just as thrushes, larks, and warblers do in that of melody, and as terns and others of the more aërial kinds excel in graceful motions. If the jackdaw is not the first of his family in intelligence, he is certainly not behind any of them. In beauty he does not compete with the three species already described—chough, jay, and pie—and at a distance is only a lesser rook or carrion crow in appearance; but there is a peculiar look about this bird when seen closely that engages and holds the attention more than mere beauty or grace. When he is sitting in repose, his head drawn in and beak inclining downwards, and turns his face to you, it does not look quite like a bird’s face: the feathers puffed out all round make the head appear preternaturally large, and the two small, bright, whitish grey eyes set close together in the middle have an expression of craft that is somewhat human and a little uncanny.
The jackdaw is one of the birds that the gamekeeper wars against without ruth, shooting and trapping them in the breeding season, especially when they are occupied in feeding their young, and can be seen and easily shot in their frequent journeys to and from the nesting-tree. But the jackdaw is not so easy to extirpate as some of its congeners. He is probably just as common as he ever was, while the chough is rapidly dying out, and crow and jay and pie are yearly diminishing in numbers, and the raven, driven from its inland haunts, clings to existence in the wildest and most inaccessible parts of the coast. The reason of this is that the jackdaw is more adaptive than the other species. He has been compared in this respect to the house-sparrow, for he can exist in town as well as country, and readily adapts himself to new surroundings. The variety of sites he uses for breeding purposes shows how plastic are his habits. He breeds apart from his fellows, like the carrion crow; or in communities, like the rook and chough. He builds in hollow trees in parks and woods, in rabbit-burrows, in ruins, church-towers, and buildings of all kinds; and in holes and crevices in cliffs, whether inland or facing the sea, where he lives in company with the rock-pigeon and the puffin. ‘At Flamborough,’ Seebohm says, ‘the jackdaws are very abundant. A republican might call them the aristocracy of the cliffs. Like the modern noble, or the monks of the Middle Ages, they contrive to eat the fat of the land without any ostensible means of living. They apparently claim an hereditary right in the cliffs; for they catch no fish, and do no work, but levy blackmail on the silly guillemots, stealing the fish which the male has brought to the ledges for the female, upsetting the egg of some unfortunate bird who has left it for a short time, and devouring as much of its contents as they can get hold of, when the egg is broken, on some ledge of rock or in the sea.’