Magpie Denies Interest in Shiny Things, Calls It an Old Rumour

A magpie from the hedge behind the allotments has issued a short statement asking the public to stop leaving teaspoons out for her. The statement, delivered from a fence post at some volume over a period of eleven minutes, described the shiny-object business as an old rumour that has followed her family for generations and that nobody has ever bothered to check.

She said she had no particular feelings about teaspoons. She said that on one occasion, many years ago, she did pick up a bottle top, that she put it down again almost immediately, and that this appears to be the entire basis of the allegation.

Asked what she does collect, she listed twigs, more twigs, a specific sort of slightly bendy twig that is very hard to come by, mud, and some dry grass. She added that if people want to leave something out for her, a length of that slightly bendy twig would be welcome and a teaspoon would not.

The statement went on to describe a pattern of unwanted gifts. Foil. Rings of keys laid hopefully along garden walls. In one case a small hand mirror, propped against the bird bath by a family who then sat at their kitchen window for four consecutive weekends with a camera. The magpie reports that she used the bird bath as normal, ignored the mirror, and that the family have now given up.

A neighbouring crow, asked to comment, said the whole thing was typical, and that his own family had spent centuries being described as ominous by people who had never met one. He declined to say anything further, on the grounds that whatever he said would be reported as a warning about something.

The magpie finished by noting that she is in fact extremely cautious about objects she does not recognise, and that anything new and glinting in her territory is something she will study from a distance, from several angles, for a considerable time, before deciding to have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Behind the joke sits a real habit of mind, and it is ours rather than the bird's. Crows and magpies are corvids, among the cleverest birds there are, and like most clever animals they treat the unfamiliar with suspicion. A strange bright object sitting in a familiar place is exactly the sort of thing a careful animal keeps well away from.

The reputation survives because of the way we keep score. If a magpie ever does pick up something bright, that is a story worth repeating; the thousand mornings it flew straight past a dropped coin are not a story at all, so nobody tells them. A reputation built entirely out of memorable exceptions is very hard to shift, which is why the birds have been fielding questions about teaspoons for a couple of hundred years, and why the rest of us might want to be a little more careful about the things we are sure of.