330 corvidjE. 



tion of materials likely to attract notice, at the bottom of a low 

 thick hedge not far from my own house. The labourers, though 

 constantly about the place, had never observed the old birds, and 

 the boy told me, that it was only by concealing himself for. a con- 

 siderable time, on observing the parent bird collecting food, that 

 he succeeded in watching her to her retreat." Mr. Hewitson in- 

 forms us, that " magpies, which with us are so suspicious of wrong, 

 build their nests under the eaves of the Norwegian cottages."* 

 Although protected themselves, they exhibit no more amiability 

 towards a wounded companion there than elsewhere. My late 

 friend George Matthews, Esq., observed in a note on these birds, 

 that he met with them in great numbers along the coast of Nor- 

 way, where they were very tame; and added, that one which 

 he knocked over with a stone, was immediately set upon and 

 killed by the others. The late Mr. John Montgomery, of Locust 

 Lodge, near Belfast, remarked, that ' ' when angry or alarmed for 

 the safety of its young, the magpie is not only very clamorous, 

 but pecks the branch on which it rests, violently tearing the bark 

 off in its rage." On the 9th of May, I once saw a grey crow 

 attack the nest of a magpie, when the latter, " single-handed," 

 boldly repulsed and drove the intruder to some distance. The 

 crow nevertheless returned to the nest several times, but was 

 always beaten off without effecting its evil purpose. Bold as the 

 magpie is in defence of its own nest, I have more than once seen it 

 beaten away by a pair of missel-thrushes from the vicinity 

 of theirs. 



It has often been stated, that if one of a pair of magpies 

 having a nest be shot, another mate is soon found ; the period, 

 according to Mr. Selby, "sometimes scarcely exceeding a day;" 

 but a gentleman of my acquaintance assures me, that on his shoot- 

 ing one of a pair of these birds in the forenoon, the survivor had 

 found another partner before evening. Perhaps the most remark- 

 able instance of widowed magpies becoming provided with new 

 partners, is that recorded by the celebrated Dr. Jenner, in the 

 Philosophical Transactions for 1824 (p. 21). These birds are 



* Eggs, Brit. Birds. Introd. p. xv. 



