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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: LUP-MAL |
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MAGPIE , or simply PIE (Fr. pie), the prefix being the abbreviated form of a human name (Margaret'), a bird once common throughout Great Britain, though now nearly everywhere scarce. Its pilfering habits have led to this result, yet the injuries it causes are exaggerated by common report; and in many countries of Europe it is still the tolerated or even the cherished neighbour of every farmer, as it formerly was in England if not in Scotland also. It did not exist in Ireland in 1617, when Fynes Morison wrote his Itinerary, but it had appeared there within a hundred years later, when Swift mentions its occurrences in his Journal to Stella, 9th July 1711. It is now common enough in that country, and there is a widespread but unfounded belief that it was introduced by the English out of spite. It is a species that when not molested is extending its range, as J. Wolley ascertained in Lapland
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Since the persecution to which the pie has been subjected in Great Britain, its habits have altered greatly. It is no longer the merry, saucy hanger-on of the homestead
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1 " Magot " and " Madge," with the same origin, are names, frequently given in England to the pie; while in France it is commonly known as Margot, if not termed, as it is in some districts, Jaquette.wrought into a deep, hollow cup, plastered with earth, and lined with fibres; but around this is erected a firmly interwoven, basket-like outwork of thorny sticks, forming a dome over the nest, and leaving but a single hole in the side for entrance and exit, so that the whole structure is rendered almost impregnable. Herein are laid from six to nine eggs, of a pale bluish-green freckled with brown and blotched with ash-colour. Superstition as to the appearance of the pie still survives even among many educated persons, and there are several versions of a rhyming adage as to the various turns of luck which its presenting itself, either alone or in company with others, is supposed to betoken, though all agree that the sight of a single pie presages sorrow.The pie belongs to the same family of birds as the crow , and is the Corvus pica of Linnaeus, the Pica caudata, P. melanoleuca, or P. rustica of modern ornithologists, who have recognized it as forming a distinct genus, but the number of species thereto belonging has been a fruitful source of discussion. Examples from the south of Spain differ slightly from those inhabiting the rest of Europe, and in some points more resemble the P. mauritanica of north-western Africa; but that species has a patch of bare skin of a fine blue colour behind the eye, and much shorter wings. No fewer than five species have been discriminated from various parts of Asia, extending to Japan; but only one of them, the P. leucoptera of Turkestan and Tibet, has of late
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