COMMON MAGPIE. 41] 
The food of the Magpie consists of testaceous mollusca, slugs, lar- 
ve, worms, young birds, eggs, small quadrupeds, carrion, sometimes 
grain and fruits of different kinds, in search of which it frequents the 
fields, hedges, thickets, and orchards, occasionally visits the farm-yard, 
prowls among the stacks, perches on the house-top, whence it sallies at 
times, and examines the dunghill and places around. Although it 
searches for larvee and worms in the ploughed fields, it never ventures, 
like the Rook, and several species of Gull, to follow the plough as it 
turns over each successive furrow. It has been accused of picking the 
eyes of lambs and sickly sheep, I think with injustice ; but it sometimes 
carries off a chicken or duckling, and sucks an egg that may have been 
dropt abroad. 
It is extremely shy and vigilant in the vicinity of towns, where it is 
much molested, but less so in country places, although 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 dis- 
tance. 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 sportsmen, so that one might marvel to find it maintaining 
its ground as a species, and yet it isnot 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. The sounds which it 
emits are a sort of chuckling cry or chatter, which it utters when 
alarmed, as wellas when it wishes to apprize 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 con- 
siderable number meet together. It begins to construct its nest early 
in March, ‘selecting as its site the top of some tall tree, a poplar, an 
ash, an elm, sometimes a willow, or a beech; or, in defect of such in a 
favourite locality, placing it in a thick bush of hawthorn, holly, or 
other low tree, or even inahedge. It isa large, and therefore generally 
very conspicuous fabric, oi a spheroidal or elliptical form, composed first 
of a layer of twigs, on which is laid a quantity of mud; then a dome 
of twigs, frequently hawthorn or sloe, but as often of any other kind, 
