570 PICA MELANOLEUCA. 



nest and assisted in its destruction, which was not finally ac- 

 complished till the other old one, arriving with a dead mouse, 

 also lent its aid. The female was observed to be the most ac- 

 tive and thievish, and withal very ungrateful ; for although the 

 children about the house had often frightened cats and hawks 

 from the spot, yet she one day seized a chicken, and carried it 

 to the top of the house to eat it, where the hen immediately 

 followed, and having rescued the chicken, brought it safely 

 down in her beak ; and it was remarked that the poor little 

 bird, though it made a great noise while the Magpie was carry- 

 ing it up, was quite quiet, and seemed to feel no pain, while its 

 mother was carrying it down. These Magpies were supposed 

 to have been the very same pair which had built there for seve- 

 ral years, never suffering either the young, when grown up, or 

 anjihing else, to take possession of their bush. The nest they 

 carefully fortified afresh every spring, with rough, strong, prickly 

 sticks, which they sometimes drew in with their united forces, 

 if unable to effect the object alone.'' — Familiar Hist, of Birds^ 

 I, 251. 



Mr. Weir of Boghead has favoured me with the followinor 

 observations on this species : — " In our neighbourhood the 

 ^lagpies most frequently select a tall old ash or beech tree 

 adjoining a farm-house for their nest, which is built near the 

 top of it, and generally upon such a slender branch as secures 

 it from being destroyed. Sometimes, however, I have seen 

 them build on the top of a high larch or Scotch fir tree, some- 

 times on a young larch in the middle of a thick stripe of plan- 

 tation, about thirteen feet from the ground, and at other times, 

 in an old hawthorn hedge more than a quarter of a mile from 

 a house. When a pair of Magpies select a place for their nest, 

 they make it their ordinary abode, and do not soon abandon it. 

 For several years, two of them built within forty yards of my 

 stable. So excessively shy and wary was the male, that I 

 never could get a shot at him. In the course of a very short 

 time, however, I deprived him of three successive females, 

 which sat on the same eggs. I was struck by the rapidity 

 with which he never failed to procure a helpmate in place of 

 the one he had lost. Whether by his artful insinuations, the 



