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 | | From: | Howell | | Subject: | A mischief or tiding of magpies; Any ideas? | | Date: | Sat, 4 Dec 2004 23:19:33 +0000 (UTC) |
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 | Hi,
We normally have a pair of magpies nest in one of the tall trees near our
house and they regularly visit our garden for food scraps that we put out.
Today, in dark December near the shortest day, we had a mischief or tiding
of magpies (about 12 birds in total) in one of the very tall horse chestnut
trees across the road from our house (in suburban Glasgow) they spent about
ten minutes sitting there and all calling at the same time, sometimes moving
from branch to branch. Occasionally, one would leave the tree and fly round
then come back to another branch. After about ten minutes they seemed to
have finished what ever they were chattering about and most of them flew
away. However, six stayed behind and flew onto the roof of the house (across
the road from mine) and I could see them sitting on the ridge and
occasionally one would hop or fly around to sit next to another one.
Eventually even these six dispersed. We now have just one pair but we don't
know if they are the same pair or whether one or both of them has changed.
A mischief/tiding of the magpies from the local area has happened every year
for at least ten years or so, although it usually takes place at the same
time as a murder of crows when we get about a dozen crows and a dozen
magpies all together. The crows did not show today.
Does any body know why magpies or crows do this? Normally when a "foreign"
crow or magpie ventures into our territory the sitting pair chases them away
fairly promptly as one would expect. We speculated that they might be
pairing off with different partners for the next breeding season or that it
might be the new young from last season finding partners but that is just
guesswork. We certainly do lose birds on a fairly regular basis. One year
one of the crow pair died leaving the partner to bring up the chicks
successfully and this year one of our resident crows has been suffering with
a painful leg because s/he hops when on the ground trying to favour his/her
right leg. We haven't noticed anything like that happen with the magpies
this year although the same thing happened to our male blackbird.
If you have any ideas we would be pleased to hear them.
Howell.
Please remove "ells" to reply.
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