Magpies are noisy, colourful, raucous, clever, devious, mischievous and yet endearing – not unlike many of the students living close by to where I currently live. The students are soon to depart for the summer (apart from the not so clever ones doing repeats) but there is a family of magpies that have very much made my neighbourhood their home.
Magpies are relative newcomers to Ireland – the first recorded mention of them in the country was in 1676. There is a pair of them nesting near my house – even though I live very close to Eyre Square in the centre of Galway, there are plenty of trees, shrubs and hedges to provide cover for many types of birds. The pair raised at least 2 young last year (the picture above shows one of the offspring on my garden back wall) who kept me amused with their antics – one of them flew down the street last summer trying to pluck a butterfly out of the air [the butterfly flew under a car and hid until the magpie got bored]. This year, the birds have been aggressively defending their territory. Over the weekend, the neighbourhood moggy decided to perch on my back wall and the magpies decided to drive it off. This video was made from inside my house so you can’t hear the unmerciful screeching from the birds. A few moments after I stopped filming, the cat gave up and wandered off. However, my two are not nearly as aggressive as the two in this video.