Why Are There So Many Magpies?
Magpies were very common in most parts of Britain until the mid-19th century, their presence encouraged by farmers because they ate the insects and rodents that were injurious to their crops and stores, a case of practicality trumping superstition. However, for the gamekeeper the magpie with its voracious appetite for eggs and young chicks was public enemy number one and a sustained campaign to eradicate them during the latter part of the 19th century and up until the First World War saw their numbers plummet.
While the control of magpie numbers is still legal on many shooting estates, magpies are not subjected to the industrial-scale persecution they once were and, unsurprisingly, since the First World War their numbers have been on the up. Since the mid-1960s, according to data collated by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the British magpie population has risen dramatically.
In the period between 1967 and 2020 numbers have risen by 111% in England and 100% across the United Kingdom as a whole. A more detailed review of the data shows that the main increase in population occurred between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s. Indeed, since then numbers have stabilised, with a 1% reduction in England in the last twenty-five years, although there was a 3% increase between 2010 and 2020. The picture for the United Kingdom shows a drop of 4% over the last twenty-five years and neither an increase nor a decrease in the last ten. At the last count (2016) there were over 610,000 breeding territories.
The BTO posits that an increase in the number of fledglings in each breeding attempt and a lower failure rate at the egg and chick stages probably accounted for the doubling of the magpie population in the thirty years from 1967. These factors have now stabilised, suggesting that magpie numbers have reached their natural ecological equilibrium.
As more of the countryside gives way to urbanisation, magpies have proven to be remarkably resourceful, developing a symbiotic relationship with humans. Urban and suburban magpie populations have increased more rapidly than their rural confrères, partly because in built up areas they are not persecuted, there is a greater availability of food, by nesting close to humans, they have protection from their natural predators, particularly crows, and the warmth generated by our buildings encourages breeding earlier in the year, enhancing survival rates. Only in the wilds of north and north-west Scotland are sightings of magpies rare.
With their brain-to-body mass equivalent to that of the great apes, urban settings also give them greater opportunities to exploit their natural intelligence. Recently and ironically, for example, three magpies in Rotterdam were observed using anti-bird spikes to fortify their nests against predators.
Whilst the scientific data does not support an increase in the magpie population, empirical evidence suggests that there is a marked shift from rural to urban settings. According to The Irish Times, magpies generally mate for life. In the first year after leaving the nest not all are successful in finding partners and so, just like teenagers, they hang around in gangs making a racket. Rather than being irked by their noise, perhaps we should spare some sympathy for these lovelorn birds.
The relative stability of the magpie population compared with the trend of falling numbers experienced by 48% of Britain’s bird species between 2015 and 2020 means that these noisy birds are set to be even more conspicuous in the future.
