Virtually nothing but Magpies...... is this a sign of things to come? (1 Viewer)

Virtually nothing but Magpies in my neighbourhood! Anyone know why?

I better share this with a few of you here, but this has been bothering me for months now. Where I live in Stockport, my immediate neighbourhood is completely overrun with just ONE species of bird only (and virtually nothing else, seriously) - and that is magpies. It might sound really strange and crazy even, but this is absolutely true.

On an almost daily basis, I have been looking and listening out for any sign of other common urban species such as pigeons, sparrows, starlings, blue/great tits, blackbirds and wrens but the six block area immediately surrounding my house is completely bereft of them - AT ALL TIMES OF THE DAY.

I keep hoping to hear the calls of all the others but all I hear are consistently the monotonous (and increasingly irritating and bothersome) chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka's from the huge magpie populace that thrive in the neighbourhood which must lead me to speculate on one scenario - the bloody magpies have either predated all the fledglings of the smaller songbird species or they have asserted their dominance so much that they have frightened them off to the nearby park (100 yards down the hill from where my house is).

Now as I walk 200 yards away from my neighbourhood, the situation changes dramatically - I DO start to see and hear other songbirds on roof tops and telegraph wires - the usual sparrows, starlings tits and blackbirds - but they stay well clear of the six block area around my house due to the magpies for some reason.

I used to hang bird feeders outside my yard to attract the tits and sparrows for a while now but during 2005 I caught just one Blue Tit in the entirety of the 8 months I persevered with hanging out the peanut feeder - and even this bird didn't stop to feed but flew off again just after landing. The reason why I am certain no birds have been is that the feeder hasn't been touched at all - it was at the same level for months before I gave up and took it down because obviously the contents had long gone off.

But this indicates then that even as long ago as 18 months back, very few songbirds would actually be seen over my neighbourhood, preferring to gather in the nearby park (which has also lost half of its trees due to the stupid council deciding that 30 of them were a "health and safety risk" and ordered them chopped down - thus destroying countless habitats for the local animal population such as birds and squirrels) where they are seen in numbers alongside the ubiquitous magpies.

I find it quite disheartening that my neighbourhood should have such a proliferation of the least attractive-sounding birds of all (I really dislike that chattering call of the magpie, it's so soulless and grating!) at the expense of all the rest, and I wonder whether or not it is worth contacting the RSPB about this to report this strange anomaly whereby it appears that they have taken over one specific territory and prevented other birds from coming anywhere near. Can they be culled or their numbers kept in check, I wonder, or is this illegal in the respect of some species being protected?

Honestly, I long for the day when I will hear the song of a blue tit, blackbird or even the starling's crazy repertoire ringing forth from my rooftop rather than the all too predictable and horrible chattering alarm call of the magpie which just reminds me of a secondary school woodwork disaster (i.e. the old wooden football rattle - which the magpie's call resembles in sound!). I'm almost now led to believe that because the immediate neighbourhood is populated by loads of unsavoury and brutish locals (chavs by any other name), we're now getting the avian equivalent in the form of bloomin' magpies!!

Who else here has come across this strange state of affairs, or is this a unique case?

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=81460

Some reading matter for you

Thanks for that link Jane - how coincidental is that? I haven't been on the forum for months now so I never even noticed that a similar thread existed only a few days ago.

Somehow that's pretty much what I feared would have happened in my neighbourhood. Such dastardly birds they are - with such an explosion in their population (probably the commonest member of the crow family in the UK today without a doubt) - I wish some way of exterminating them or culling them could be in order, if only to protect the more vulnerable smaller songbird species.

Jack Snipe said:

TSuch dastardly birds they are - with such an explosion in their population (probably the commonest member of the crow family in the UK today without a doubt) - I wish some way of exterminating them or culling them could be in order, if only to protect the more vulnerable smaller songbird species.

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Lets get this right, mankind has messed things up so that a certain species does better at the expense of others: solution....why kill them of course, obvious innit.

Peregrine swoops down and kills a pigeon everybody says magnificent, fantastic, nature in the raw etc etc. magpie pinches an egg or chick...shoot the b*st*rd.
People are very shallow.

All IMHO of course.

Nick

Nick-on said:

Lets get this right, mankind has messed things up so that a certain species does better at the expense of others: solution....why kill them of course, obvious innit.

Peregrine swoops down and kills a pigeon everybody says magnificent, fantastic, nature in the raw etc etc. magpie pinches an egg or chick...shoot the b*st*rd.
People are very shallow.

All IMHO of course.

Nick

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Excuse me, but it's not a case of "being shallow" as you so pedantically put it, but a question of genuinely fearing for the health of our small songbird population, which, as you already know, is in some sort of perpetual decline in the cases of certain species (such as sparrows, starlings, some finches, etc)....so with the Magpie population explosion more or less prevailing - and let's face it, they ARE our commonest crow along with Rook - how do we go about trying to ensure the smaller more vulnerable species can at least retain their numbers? I'm sure I have read from other sources that sometimes when things get as potentially serious as this, there are measures whereby the numbers of certain predatory species such as magpies can be controlled, but don't hold me to this as gospel. Do the RSPB not have anything on their (albeit terrible to navigate) website about matters such as this?

Besides, your example / comparison above is a rather weak one. Pigeons ARE numerous and are considered as pests in cities, whilst small songbirds aren't really. So peregrines hunting pigeons (like the pair that did recently in Manchester City Centre using one of the tower blocks as their nest/lookout) are actually doing an effective job of pest control, whereas magpies decimating small songbird species really should be a cause for concern. IMHO of course.

There's a feature by the BTO in the last Bird Watching mag. The graph shows that corvid populations slowly fluctuate at pretty steady rates over the years, and we're just coming down from a pretty average "spike" on the graph.

The results of the Garden Birdwatch show:

Formal analysis showed that between 1995 and 2002, [magpie's] garden usage trends were all slightly negative. The 'reporting rate plot' for Magpie shows that consistently over the last 12 years, Magpies have been reported in only around half the gardens taking part in GBW, with no obvious trends, either upwards or downwards.

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A study in Sheffield quoted in the same article shows that yes, Magpies and Carrion Crows are on the up in urban parts of that particular study area, but against the scare stories, so were Blackbirds and Robins.

It's wrong to go "there are less songbirds, and there are more magpies, therefore the only option is magpies ate all the songbirds". There are a million reasons why birds may not be on your feeder any more, from a rise in cats (and I mean scaring birds off, not devouring them all so there's none left), trees being felled, or even a more popular feeding post being set up nearby. Predators don't work by eating all the local prey until they've all gone, that's not exactly the most sensible strategy in evolutionary terms. It's a complicated system that's beyond my brains to explain fully, but in general terms predators' populations are controlled by the amount of prey, not vice versa. While of course true that introduced predators can wipe out vulnerable species (mink and water vole for example), situations like this are much less likely in species that have been co-existing for thousands and millions of years.

And please don't contact the RSPB, I expect they get about 300 similar "evil magpie" stories from well-meaning folk every week. I personally think magpies are great birds, they're beautiful, resourceful, intelligent and brighten up areas where there are few other birds to see. It's a shame so many people are using them as scapegoats - yes they do take birds eggs, but so do Great Spotted Woodpeckers and everyone's happy as larry to see them frequenting the birdfeeder, aren't they? The figures don't stack up in the case against corvids, and as always it's mankind going "it's that other animal's fault!" when songbird decline can in nearly all cases be levelled on our own doorstep.

Jack Snipe said:

-snip but a question of genuinely fearing for the health of our small songbird population, which, as you already know, is in some sort of perpetual decline in the cases of certain species (such as sparrows, starlings, some finches, etc)....

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Just as long as you remember that the absence of songbirds in your vicinity is down to changes in habitat and expecially lack of food for them. It is emphatically not because Magpies are flourishing.

Magpies on the other hand are able to survive on human detritus....we reap what we sow.

Thanks for your viewpoints also, Jane and Pete. It's given me something to think about at least. Hopefully this has convinced me that it isn't entirely the fault of the magpies. And I'm not really scapegoating them per se. I guess I was just getting [knee jerk?] anxious about what might have occurred as I don't see anything other than magpies around my house these days (but then I walk down to the nearby park and other streets and it is a slightly different story, as I have already said.). It's not to say I despise them - they ARE striking birds (only the Jay has more beautiful plumage of all the native crow family) and, along with Jackdaws, I DO actually find their comical gait and resourcefulness quite enthralling....it's just when every morning you hear nothing but loud "chakkachakkachakkachakkachak"s stirring you from your sleep and then continuing throughout the day, with no melodious tweets to be heard within earshot, it gets somewhat wearying!

Jane Turner said:

Just as long as you remember that the absence of songbirds in your vicinity is down to changes in habitat and expecially lack of food for them. It is emphatically not because Magpies are flourishing.

Magpies on the other hand are able to survive on human detritus....we reap what we sow.

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whilst i agree completely that predation by magpies or any other predator is not responsible for the long term decline in songbirds
it is surely not unreasonable to suggest that a regular appearance of a large number of predators in a certain location will deter other species from frequenting that area after all jack snipes observations that there seem to be songbirds in close by areas suggests this could be the case
in my own garden i used to get robins, blackbirds and thrushes feeding on the ground however the neighbours on both sides decided to get cats and now i get no birds feeding on the ground at all i don't think they have killed them all as they are both pretty fat and don't seem to be able to catch anything(the cats not the neighbours) i think there presence deters the birds
after all if the birds are thinking of nesting its unlikly they will choose an area with a large number of highly visible predators who want to eat their babies
on the other hand if you are leaving food in your feeder to the point where it is going off it may not be the magpies who have killed all the birds it could be YOU

PaulE said:

whilst i agree completely that predation by magpies or any other predator is not responsible for the long term decline in songbirds
it is surely not unreasonable to suggest that a regular appearance of a large number of predators in a certain location will deter other species from frequenting that area after all jack snipes observations that there seem to be songbirds in close by areas suggests this could be the case
in my own garden i used to get robins, blackbirds and thrushes feeding on the ground however the neighbours on both sides decided to get cats and now i get no birds feeding on the ground at all i don't think they have killed them all as they are both pretty fat and don't seem to be able to catch anything(the cats not the neighbours) i think there presence deters the birds
after all if the birds are thinking of nesting its unlikly they will choose an area with a large number of highly visible predators who want to eat their babies
on the other hand if you are leaving food in your feeder to the point where it is going off it may not be the magpies who have killed all the birds it could be YOU

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Dogs seem to outnumber cats almost by 10 to 1 in my immediate neighbourhood (probably true). In one street adjacent to my backyard almost every other third house has a dog in the household. Every morning the dawn chorus is as follows: dogs and magpies, car horns and revving engines!! It's all pretty grim really - the magpies being possibly the least destructive environmentally of all of them!

I doubt my feeder has been responsible for the birds though - as it has remained resolutely UNTOUCHED since the day I hung it up - It's one of those plastic see-through round cylinders where there are lots of horizontal bars to calibrate the level at which the nuts are....and it has stayed at that level until the contents went off. I drew a red marker line on the top level by way of monitoring its usage over time. There is no sign whatsoever of any birds pecking at the nuts as they were all intact, remaining all the way up to the red line. This leads me to conclude emphatically that absolutely hardly any birds have used it, probably because they're scared off by the number of magpies that are in the area.

I'm still exhausted from the last Magpie thread, wherein I hope it was conclusively shown that magpies do not affect the long-term breeding populations of songbirds, but I do have a couple of observations on the above.

First is to note that I've got loads of Magpies in the gardens of my urban flats, and they don't seem to scare off the smaller birds. I have Nuthatches, Great, Blue, Coal and Long-Tailed Tits, Bullfinches, Chaffinches, Robins, Collared Doves and Woodpigeons coming to the feeders while there are Magpies about, although admittedly they don't use the same feeder at the same time. Not coming to the feeders but regular in the gardens are Goldfinches, Mistle and Song Thrushes, Blackbirds, Wrens and wintering Blackcaps and Goldcrests. None of these birds seem too worried by the Magpies, or the more occasional Carrion Crow and Jay.

Second observation is that the call you describe as so annoying, Jack Snipe, is the Magpie's alarm, isn't it? Mine only make that racket when a cat's around, or when they find the roosting Tawny Owl. In both instances the Blackbirds and often other smaller birds join in the mobbing/alarming with the Magpies. I'm glad they do it as it helps me find the owl!

Third, my birds won't touch peanuts. Or nyjer. Only the sunflower hearts, fat balls and mixed seed attract any interest. The squirrels will eat the peanuts, the birds just don't.

Ain't nature strange?

Graham

Indeed nature is strange Graham! |;| Only prior to this recent downturn in small birds visiting our yards and gardens I used to have loads of sparrows and tits and others feeding from the same cylindrical nut feeder (same food too incidentally) which I used to hang out in the very same garden in years previous - and they were always regularly visiting throughout the day - such that the contents would be pretty much consumed within a couple of weeks or so.

This is why I find it disconcerting that as of recently there are no visitors at all - even though the feeder is hung high in exactly the same place as before in the garden (well clear of any walls or perimeter fences to prevent lurking cats waiting of course!).

True, the Magpie alarm calls are the rattling/chakking noises, but I don't know why they are so alarmed constantly, otherwise why would they keep making this sound? I guess you really have to experience it here (especially in the mornings) first hand to get an idea of how unusually common an occurrence this is. The sheer relentlessness of the constant chattering can be overwhelming at times.....it's like they just chakka-chakka non stop for 15-20 minutes at a time.

Maybe it's the squirrels that are posing a threat to the magpies (I've seen them tussling with one another in the nearby parks - comically chasing each other around the grass and up the trees).... |;|

Similarly, Raven populations (unpopulated areas of the Western US) are higher than pre settlement estimates.

And thus increased egg predation on other species.

The current theory as to why?

Road kill.

Coyotes and Golden Eagles also benefit from Road kill as well, but it seem to be a net energy gain for the Corvids.

Maybe you live close to a communal roost of Magpies. A few dozen can sleep together at times – and they will “communicate” quite a lot. They are probably the most entertaining birds around... if you pay attention.

Surely, as magpies aren't prone to taking adult birds in the same way as, say, Sparrowhawks, they aren't going to "scare birds off"? An adult bird without young or eggs has little to fear from a magpie. They may choose to nest a bit further away in a slightly less magpie-heavy areas, but wouldn't scarper at the merest sight of a magpie.

I was thinking about this argument last night, and thought of the situation like this. Imagine a village is evacuated for whatever reason, and subsequently looters move in. An observer without knowing the history may go "the village is deserted, but it's full of looters, therefore the looters scared all the people away". It's jumping to a conclusion based on one observation.

Factors that affect songbirds don't necessarily affect magpies and crows, which may thrive in the very same conditions that are doing for the songbirds. If a landfill site was built at the bottom of your garden, and all the birds you saw from then on were gulls, you wouldn't think it was the gulls that were to blame. Obviously the real situation is much more subtle that this, but hopefully someone'll be able to work out what I mean by this meandering post which I hope makes some sense!

I keep hoping to hear the calls of all the others but all I hear are consistently the monotonous (and increasingly irritating and bothersome) chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka's

Monotonous?? Bothersome??

Tell that to Rossini.


I honestly thought that this was a joke post when I first read it, teasing people into reaction. I guess not though.

I to live in Stockport in an urban area off Hall Street, birds at the moment seen around my streets or heard calling are -

Mistle Thrush, Song Thrush, Blackbird, Robin, Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Pied Wagtail, Magpie, Crow,
Wren, Blue Tit, Great Tit and Woodpigeon

Flyovers include all the common gulls, osprey, heron, and not to forget the waxwings round the corner but not this winter

Three huge popular trees were chopped down adjacent to my house recently, but purely on safety grounds, if they fell over, my house was in the firing line!

The area is crawling with cats, more so than dogs and increasing, as jane says, its down to habitat and food availability, i have lived there on and off since 1987 and have seen no real change in the birds observed throughout all the seasons, squirrel and hedgehog seen also

Paul

I am aware that things can easily change too - as you mention Paul, sometimes habitats may alter subtly but the species still remain in quantity. I used to live in Heaton Moor by the railway line and I regularly heard tawny owls hooting in the thick tree cover behind our shared house. It was wonderful to behold. But there were also lots of magpies too and squirrels. And a fox would regularly snoop around the railway embankment - much to our joy. However, we don't know if it (the fox) was taking birds at all, but there were loads of the usual songbird varieties here: thrushes, finches, tits, woodpigeon, sparrows, starlings wrens, robins...... I suppose like some have said here, it varies from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. At least that now answers most of the questions that were raised in the first post!

Saw two of our local magpies mating earlier as I walked through the park on the way back from town... very entertaining to watch nevertheless...... the air was also thick with the sound of robins, wrens and great tits.....now I just wish they would visit my garden/neighbourhood!

There may be other reasons why you have noticed lower numbers of birds this year.

1. At least with us its been a very mild winter. Only when we've had brief cold snaps have birds come into the gardens in numbers. Outside of these times my feeders have been more or less ignored completely. Presumably there has been enough natural food around to support populations without them coming into suburbia. Growing seasons for plants and survival of insects into winter are obviously much longer now than they were even a few years ago.

2. If you live in a town that is expanding it may be that you now are too far "inland" for birds to regularly come into your garden. This will only leave those birds that can tolerate very close contact with humans. Perhaps development has obliterated a "wildlife corridor" so once more species that used to come through to you now don't.

oops I've just noticed you comment how the trees have been removed in the local park. Birds like to work a circuit when feeding and removing part of a circuit may mean they miss you out altogether.

Either way in a few years time you may have ring necked parakeets (although they are being blamed for loss of songbirds down south) and if you put in a pond a garden full of canada geese and little egrets to look forward too.

Yours John O'

Jack Snipe said:

I wish some way of exterminating them or culling them could be in order, if only to protect the more vulnerable smaller songbird species.

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What garbage.

Before saying things like this, why don't you put forward some EVIDENCE to back your claims?

How do you know it is Magpies? Please do inform, in my read through this thread I repeatedly see you blame Magpies for the lack of songbirds but fail to find a single piece of evidence, whether it be statistics etc.

Before you accuse Nick-on's example as being "weak", you should consider your own lack of examples and the strength of your own argument.