Cannibal magpie

[arc1953]

Are magpies cannibals?

[Lily]

Hi! 

I think they eat other birds as I saw one steal a baby sparrow from the nest and fly off with it while the mother sparrow flapped around after it shrieking - it was so sad. 

[Artful]

Not quite sure what you are getting at but I'll try. Already they are blooming nuisances whipping the food you put out for other birds in a very aggressive manner but let's face it they've got to eat too. We had chickens until a couplee of weeks ago when a fox came and cleared the coop - we had to watch out for magpies as they would steal the eggs, attack and eat the chicks. Like many scavanger style bird they like bones and meat - our chickens have always liked our left-over chicken bones (aaagh, how awful!) and ham rinds - the magpies always queued up to see what the chickens left, they are cowardly birds - in my experience at any rate!

[Emily Ball]

I have a special fondness for magpies ever since I raised one from a featherless chick after its parents were shot by a gamekeeper. Like all members of the crow family they do eat carrion and will take live chicks from the nest, usually to feed their own. The one I raised was perfectly free to come and go and would tap persistently on a window to be let in after a couple of days away and when I went to the local shops he would wair for me in a high tree near my house until I returned and then fly down to perch on my shoulder while I walked back into my house. He was probably much too tame because inevitably he eventually disappeared (I never learned his fate) but on enquiring from neighbours I discovered he had been in the habit of visiting various people and getting titbits, having baths in their washing-up bowls and generally entertaining them with his cheekiness. There was only one woman who wasn't delighted to have him around and that was because apparently he was in the habit of pinching her clothes pegs off the washing line!