Fishing and shooting

My friend Nick phoned to say I had to do something about magpies because he hates them. He means that he expects me to write outrageously cruel things about magpies. But I am not sure I would go as far as to say I hate them, just that I have some difficulty understanding their role in the scheme of things.

The reason they are so despised is because they go around raiding nests and eating the eggs of prettier birds with prettier songs. The Song Bird Survival Trust gets jolly cross about magpies.

Charlie Jacoby, the presenter of Fieldsports TV, goes completely loopy on the subject and once started a "kill a magpie" competition in Sporting Rifle magazine. And they do have an annoying cockiness about them, it is true. Added to which, they are particularly canny and don't sit still to be shot. I would not say we are overrun by magpies but we never saw one here until three years ago – Nick more or less made out he is being pecked to death by magpies.

But where there is one there are usually two or half a dozen lurking. Last year there were definitely two as I saw them at the same time and this year unless it is the same bird doing a comedy routine flitting back and forth across my line of sight from the kitchen window, probably five (the collective nouns for magpies depending where you live presumably, are a tittering, tiding, gulp, murder or charm).

We discovered just how quick a magpie can be when taking Crumpet the cocker spaniel for a walk. As we were in the first five minutes of the walk Crumpet was, as are most cockers, particularly wild (once they calm down a bit you can get some sense out of them). Just as we came round the end of the neighbour's small triangular field which he uses as a quarantine station for ailing animals, Crumpet went off in a fast tracking zig zag just when I wasn't paying attention.

The next thing she was through a strip of gorse on the fence line and out came a hen pheasant on the end of her nose. Within seconds of her cringing return a magpie had appeared and dived straight into the gorse tunnel. Admittedly it flew straight out again what with all the shouting at Crumpet, but Crumpet had given away the exact position of the nest which could have held at least a dozen eggs, now, I'll bet, all gone.

That weekend our one-time keeper son came home for a wedding and amused himself when not recovering from the after effects, by working out the magpies' modus operandi and from which angle they could be most easily shot with a .22 from the top floor without actually having to get out of bed or off the lavatory. It takes skill and dedication I can tell you.

But as they belong to the crow family they are exceptionally intelligent and deeply suspicious of any new feature in their landscape like the end of a .22 silencer waggling through a window. The magpies are still with us.

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