85 
THE MAGPIE. 
(Pica caiidata.) 
AM pleased to say that the magpie is extremely common 
around Bristol, and this is largely due to the little 
attention paid to the preservation of game, since it is 
rarely that they are molested, except by the “loafing 
gunner.” I shall confine my remarks to the bird in its wild 
state, leaving to others the tale of mag’s impudence and thievish 
propensities in captivity. The magpie is an early nester, being 
resident with us all the year round, selecting the site for its nest 
about the beginning of April. The nest is a massive structure, 
composed of large sticks on the outside, and thickly plastered on 
the inside with smaller sticks and mud. A hole of sufficient size 
to admit the bird is made in the side, a little more than half-way 
up, guarded with thorns and sticks, and generally turned in the 
more secluded direction. It is in the shape of a dome, and 
exceedingly hard to get at with the bare hands, owing to its 
size and the numbers of thorns with which it is composed. The 
nest is placed in trees — elms by preference — sometimes at a 
considerable height, sometimes not more than thirty feet from 
the ground. Very frequently, too, the magpie selects a thick, 
high thorn hedge, and at the top of this builds a nest visible to 
any who comes near the spot. It may be as well to say that 
there is no difference of species between the magpie building in 
the tree and the magpie building in the hedge. My opinion is 
that the birds do not like the trouble of flying to a tall tree with 
materials for their nest, as, if you watch them, their flight is 
laboured and clumsy when ascending to any height, and if there 
happens to be a wind — as is frequently the case in April — they 
are blown out of their course and have great trouble in beating 
round against it. If this is not the reason, I cannot imagine why 
a bird, which has reared its young year after year in a high tree, 
should descend to a mere bush, where its eggs are in constant 
peril, and, in fact, are seldom allowed to remain unmolested. 
The magpie lays six or seven eggs, which are considerably larger 
than a blackbird’s, and are a pale bluish white in colour, spotted 
all over, and abundantly so in general, with grey and greenish 
brown of several shades. I knew a pair of magpies near here 
who always built in the same tree year after year, and were 
invariably unsuccessful in rearing more than one or two young 
ones. The reason of this I do not know, unless the egg-producing 
powers of the hen-bird were in some way impaired, and this 
seems the more probable as the eggs were never uniform in 
shape and colour, but were frequently almost white, and in one 
instance one of the eggs was no bigger than a wryneck’s — less 
than half its proper size. The young magpies accompany their 
parents for some weeks after they leave the nest, and it is not 
