I have 7 magpies in my front garden

[sashh]

I usually have 2 pairs of magpies visit my garden but this morning the hatchlings must be learning how to.. er.. bird?

The adults easily hop on and off the fence, the newcomers, well they are finding their wings.

One managed to perch after a lot of flapping, another ended up facing the opposite way.

Sorry, no photo, I just wanted to share, it made me smile.

7 for a secret never to be told. Got any good secrets?😁

Wow they'll be noisy neighbours lol 😆

I had to sing the song from 1970s children's show Magpie to remember what 7 stood for! Ma-a-a-ag-pie ...

Awww the babies must be so cute.

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold

Seven for a secret never told....

Ma-a-a-ag-piiiiiiie!

Every Mumnsnetter who was a child in the 70s is now chorusing this like crazy

I like watching our magpies teaching the babies how to peck the grass for insects. They are noisy buggers, but good parents. They saw off a flock of jackdaws last year.

I’m an 80’s baby, 88, and even I’m singing this song

They are about half the size of their parents and their heads are slightly fluffy.

We call them 'Dereks' because I found one walking around next to my car, I dropped my cardigan on it and took it to the vet across the road where my friend suggested the name 'Derek'.

❤❤❤❤❤❤

I’ve always wondered if their big groups are family clans and whether magpie parents ‘stay in touch’, so to speak.

We have a mating pair who come visit us regularly, we feed them the leftover food our cats refuse to eat! I think they had a baby come visit us recently, there were two others that were supervising its food foraging efforts.

Do magpies have more than one clutch per year?

They are a very successful species. Are they becoming more common? It feels that way to me.

I love magpies. We have a pair in the garden who enjoy playing chase with the guinea pigs.

I also saw THIRTEEN magpies in a group the evening of the night my son was born. Given how he is,it was probably an omen 😁

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g it seems like it to me.

I once saw one fight a squirrel and win.

Incredibly clever birds.

A few weeks ago I was minding my own business when there was an almighty cackling from the back garden. Enough to get me to have a look. There were 2 magpies on the lawn really going for it with their machine-gun cackles. As I open the patio, they stopped. Looked at one another. Hopped backwards and then both looked up to the chimney where a saw a third magpie looking straight at me before flying off.

It was hard to shake the feeling I'd been "had".

Magpie update, and this is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.

So two juvenile magpies in the garden, one perched on the fence and looked at the other that also perched on the fence near by. They looked like they were practicing balancing and the falling upside down events.

One fell off closely followed by the sibling that landed on top of the first one.

So they start a loud and flappy fight.

Mum or Dad just swooped in, cack cacked at them and they separated, but mum or dad wasn't accepting that and they have just had about 2 mins of being told of before all four flew off again.

It's like the magpie version of, "right if you two can't behave we are going"

We had six on our roof last night. I could hear lots of screeching and banging. On checking feathers were flying down side of our dormer, so I thought our cat had got one. Turns out a seagal was after them. I'm not sure I'll personally get gold, but if you look at our win in the Euros or gold in swimming last night, maybe that was the gold!