3 hours ago
1
Is it too early to whisper the S word? If so, I blame the magpies. Every day for the past two weeks, while enjoying my morning cuppa in bed, I’ve been watching a pair nest-building in a Norway maple across the road. But though the arrival of spring advances each year at a faster pace than any other season, the magpies’ calendar is not out of kilter. Like their corvid cousins the rooks and ravens, they usually start nesting in winter, occasionally as early as December.
Now, a fortnight in, they’re shoring up the bowl-shaped platform in a fork between three upper branches. The movement of their swinging tails as they manoeuvre twigs into place looks graceful, even balletic.
But when I venture out for a closer look, it seems their building technique owes more to persistence than proficiency. Whereas other birds might choose fine, pliable sprigs and roots to weave into a base, this pair have opted for finger-thick hazel sticks, which they are attempting to hammer into submission with their bills, losing several over the edge of the nest in the process – to their apparent confusion. It turns out to be more karate than ballet.
Only 100 metres along the verge, a second pair are already constructing the cover over their ash-twig nest at the top of an alder tree. This unusual strategy is for protection from predators, and it reminds me what intelligent birds they are. My magpies tolerate them until they come too close, whereupon a rooftop chase ensues, with raucous chack-chacking and posturing. Perhaps they suspect their neighbours of pilfering twigs, something I’ve seen my pair doing from an abandoned nest in a field maple further down the road.
It won’t be long until there’s a treetop lull while the builders take a well-earned break for a few weeks before egg-laying begins. Early spring-nesting species such as long-tailed tits will be busy in the understorey, creating intricate domes of moss and lichen – miniature filigree versions of the magpies’ bulky assemblages. But what magpies lack in finesse, they make up for in tenacity. It’s a lesson for us all: if at first you don’t succeed, bash it, bash it and bash it again.
