Do you salute/whistle at magpies?

[MirandaGoshawk]

If so, can you please explain why you do it? Have just spent the day out with a friend and she did this a lot. I think there were maybe two pairs of birds flying about and she both saluted and whistled at them several times while we were talking. I found it a bit 'look at me' and she couldn't tell me why she did it, except that her family did. Nothing on web that I could find.TIA

miranda the magpie is blissfully unaware of my craziness 😁
It's just an ingrained thing left over from childhood. I obviously know nothing bad will happen if I don't say it but the compulsion to do it is irresistible!

Parents, eh?

I say "good day my lord" but would say it once and not break off a conversation to say it!

How do we know all these single magpies are male?

How do we know all these single magpies are male?

From memory the female attaches to one dominant male and the others drop back and become subservient and form "the flock" ?

The regular magpies were on our lawn yesterday afternoon - I love watching them pecking away and little tufts of grass being flung behind them ...

Good morning/ good afternoon Mr magpie.

I’m not superstitious at all but it’s something DM always said so I just picked it up and copied her I suppose. If I was standing chatting I’m not sure I would notice, it’s usually when I’m in the car I think.

I salute and say "Morning Jack, how's your wife?" absolutely bonkers I know. Now I am panicking as everyone else is far more formal with their "Mr Magpie" and asking after the children too. I fear that I am going to offend Mr Magpie with my informality.

I have never heard of this, I don't think I even know what a magpie looks like

I am not superstitious at all though.

I have never heard of this at all. Brought up in a town though.

No. Attributing luck of any kind to random sightings of random wild birds is insane.

DP does this, always has.

My friend says 'hello Mr Magpie how's the wife and kids', to lone magpies.

I've never heard of this either.

Just reading "Wakenhyrst " by Michelle Paver, and magpies feature quite a lot in the Gothic storyline. Hadn't realised the old country name for them is " chatterpie ". Apparently " mag" is an ancient word meaning chatter!

I fork the evil eye at single magpies. One for sorrow and all that. It's so deeply ingrained now it's like a reflex.

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Salute "Good day Mr Magpie, where's Mrs Magpie?" to lone magpies. There's a magpie nest in the trees outside my house so I see them almost every day. I just mutter it under my breath and try to disguise the salute in case anyone notices

1 for sorrow
2 for joy
3 for a girl
4 for a boy
5 for silver
6 for gold
7 for a secret never to be told

I salute single magpies when I'm out and about but there is a family of the noisy fekkers nesting in a tree across the road from my house. They don't always go out together but I've given up saluting that lot.

One magpie "Good morning Mr Magpie and how is your lady wife today?". One for sorrow, etc.

After a lot of IVF which led to looking for signs of success ANYWHERE and treating solo magpies as some sort of arbiters of pregnancy with reverent salutes, I've had it.

Two miscarriages later and the magpies can get FUCKED.

I saluted single magpies til recently. No idea why I did it, the one for sorrow thing I guess. But then I thought fuck it, I'm not going to do it anymore and so I stopped. Liberating

Yes I always say Morning Mr Magpie under my breath - but for a laugh/tradition, not because I really believe magpies can influence my fortune (hope no magpies are reading this)

I throw salt over my shoulder as well, and bang the other elbow as WatchingTheWheels85 mentioned! Just because it reminds me of my gran, but I don't think she did it in seriousness anyway, it was just something she said to us kids I think, and I've continued it

We also used to throw apple peelings onto the ground to predict who we'd marry - the peel was supposed to form your intended's first initial which, unsurprisingly, was nearly always S! I still do this sometimes even though am happily married

I salute a single magpie and count backwards under my breath from 7 to 1 - bonkers!

I make a hoop with my thumb and index finger and then use my other index finger to break it, breaking the chain of bad luck

I nonchalantly scratch the side of my head for a single magpie as I feel like a twat doing a salute but can’t quite bring myself to do nothing so I do this and hope no one notices.