Chatterpie

Morning Major!

After last night's deluge, we woke to sunshine and decided that we had better make the most of it as more thundery showers were forecast for this afternoon.  A relatively short flat walk around the local fields is still a bit of an effort at the moment, but I managed it, so that's two days in a row now.  Things are improving, very slowly, but improving all the same.

Inevitably there was nothing exotic and/or different, but I was still rather pleased with this shot of the magpie in flight, which reveals plenty of interesting detail. Ideally it would have been flying off with some silver jewellery for that "perfect" shot.  

That said, the legend of the thieving magpie seems to be no more than that, a legend.  Behavioural scientists haven't been able to establish that magpies are particularly drawn to bright objects, despite Rossini's opera.   The Thieving Magpie, tells of a household maid who is very nearly hung for stealing her employer's silver. The big plot twist at the end is that the thief is actually .... a magpie. It seems that it was the popularity of Rossini's opera that gave rise to the wide spread belief in the corvid kleptomaniac.