ONE FOR SORROW, TWO FOR JOY
Magpies are birds of the corvid family, which also includes crows, jackdaws, jays and ravens. Magpies are widely found across the world, especially in parts of Europe, Asia, North America and Africa. Magpies are one of my favourite birds here. They regularly frequent my garden generally to scavenge for food. I always blame the birds for pecking open my rubbish bags in search of food. I'm perhaps unfairly blaming them as I once saw a rat bite its way into a rubbish bag. The reason there are sometimes rubbish bags in my front garden is that after about ten days there's no room in the large wheelie bin - the council only collects non-recyclable rubbish every fortnight here. Do you have magpies where you live? Allen William Seaby's A Magpie in a Pine Tree , c1906: In England, magpies were and still are often seen as bad fortune or good fortune depending how many are counted. The book, Observations of Popular Antiquities , published in 1780, is the first known record of coun...