~Songbirds guard your nests~
Thieves cloaked in piebald feathers
plan to pillage eggs.
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Monday Morning #Haiku 97 — Magpies
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Sarah Potter Writes 
Naughty magpies! 😕
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They are naughty, with stealing only one of their vices. I’ve even seen them locked in mid-air mortal combat among each other, with several of them ganging up against one, pecking feathers out of the victim and driving it off their perceived territory. They also like pecking window putty!
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Oh dear! 😯
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Fantastic wordsmithing here! We don’t have magpies where I live so I have to get my fill of them when we’re traveling out west. They’re such dastardly little criminals but I can’t help but smile at their flash and swagger!
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I love your wordsmithing, too — that “flash and swagger”.
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Love the way you’ve captured the character of the birds Sarah, I love all of these corvids and just try to ignore what I know about how they find things to eat!
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Apparently the more roadkill there is available to magpies, the less they raid songbirds’ nests. With an increase in traffic, the songbird population has managed to grow again.
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and they are quick and strong thieves at that. One once plucked a half a sandwich right out of my young daughter’s hand.
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I’ve known seagulls do that down on the seafront, but never a magpie. The audacity of it! I must guard my food well, next time I eat it out in the garden.
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She was five years old and has never forgotten!
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I’ve “liked” that comment, more as an acknowledgement than an actual like, as I hate to think of a five-year-old suffering such a trauma. I hope her experience didn’t leave her frightened of birds in general.
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It actually did although the last couple of years, two crows have been coming by her balcony..on the other side of mesh and she has named them and talks to them. So a bit of healing.
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Golly! The bird life outside in my patio garden in Southern California seems much more sedate. Lately a few little wrens, picking at the rosemary plant, and the usual hummingbirds sampling the red sage nectar. Occasionally, they will have a little scuffle, mostly near the hummingbird feeder that hangs by the window. Driving recently near one of the local beaches, we did see a large hawk, first pausing, and almost completely stopping in the air, then diving on a field. He came up again without anything in his claws, and we drove on past, so I suppose he eventually found his dinner. Sometimes the whole food chain thing does nothing for me. I always change the channel before the lion tackles the zebra.
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Wonderful to hear about your bird life in California. I have little wrens in my garden, probably after my rosemary plant, too. I see hawks occasionally when walking on the hills near my house. Also, the occasional tawny or barn owl swoops over my garden. I’d love to have some hummingbirds, but I think our climate would be too cool and wet for them.
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