Magpie

In all these years I've never posted a picture of a magpie, even though we have a pair that is just as resident in the garden as the red kites. The magpies are the sworn deadly enemies of all the other birds in the garden. We once saw the poor pheasants unsuccessfully try to stop one magpie flying away with their last chick (the pheasants are rather incompetent parents). Another time we saw the magpies build their nest in the closest pine tree to the red kites' nest so that they could look down into it.  The female red kite waited until they flew off then calmly dismantled their nest twig by twig, despite the screaming attacks of the returning magpies. The magpies successfully fledge a chick each May and raid the bird feeders all year round.  This one is about to have a good scratch before attacking the seed feeder again.