MAGPIE. 567 



it sometimes carries off a chicken or duckling, and sucks an 

 egg that may have been dropped abroad. 



It is extremely shy and vigilant in the vicinity of towns, 

 where it is much molested, but less so in country places, al- 

 though even there it is readily alarmed. When one pursues 

 it openly, it flits along the walls and hedges, shifts from tree 

 to tree, and at length flies off to a distance. Yet it requires all 

 its vigilance to preserve its life ; for, as it destroys the eggs and 

 young of game birds, it is keenly pursued by keepers and sj)orts- 

 men ; so that one might marvel to find it maintaining its ground 

 as a species, and yet it is not apparently diminishing in most 

 parts of the country. 



On the ground it generally walks in the same manner as the 

 crows, but occasionally leaps in a sidelong direction. Its flight 

 is as described above. The sounds which it emits are a sort of 

 chuckling cry or chatter, which it utters when alarmed, as well 

 as when it wishes to apprise other birds of danger. On the 

 appearance of a fox, a cat, or other unfriendly animal, it never 

 ceases hovering about it, and alarming the neighbourhood by 

 its cries, until the enemy has slunk away out of sight. 



It generally keeps in pairs all the year round, accompanies 

 its young for some weeks after they first come abroad, and 

 after the breeding season retires at night to the copses or woods, 

 where sometimes a considerable number meet together. It 

 does not appear that it has many enemies among its own kind, 

 although doubtless many ill-wishers, seeing it is ever prone to 

 destroy the eggs and young of the smaller birds. 



It is always pleasant to meet with the Magpie, whatever be 

 its number, even or odd, — some persons believing that there is 

 virtue in numbers, whether applied to magpies or to systems 

 of classification. Its loud clatter among the branches of the 

 tall trees that overhang the road raises your drooping spirits, 

 for it apprises you of the neighbourhood of a house, perhaps an 

 inn, where you may recruit your energies. Doubly enlivening 

 are the glimpses which you obtain of it as it flits from one 

 branch to another, when descending from the central ridges of 

 the Grampians, w^here you have been w^andering all day in 

 quest of their rarer vegetable productions, or mayhap laden 



