TO KILL A MAGPIE
Pamper them with Pedigree Chum and milk then whack them with a croquet post: Robert
Gore-Langton on purging your garden of pests
THERE's not a lot you can do about terrorism on the global stage, but you can certainly make a contribution at home, in your garden. Declare war on magpies. These feathered Daleks have become Britain's number one garden assassins, and no one is reporting it. In the 1980s the immigrant Canada goose was the ultimate yob bird. Now it's the magpie that is turning the nation's suburbs into no-fly zones for everything except crows and police helicopters. Once upon a time you would see the occasional couple of magpies tucking into something dead on the roadside, and would sing two for joy'. Now you never see anything else.
One theory is that the decline in gamekeepers — who shoot magpies as vermin — and in the number of farmers who use a gun has meant that magpies have moved in from the fields and colonised our gardens, where the pickings are easy. When the nesting season comes round, the other fledglings do fine until the magpies turn up and scoff the lot. As a result, song thrushes and sparrows are as rare as emus in my neck of the woods.
Killing magpies isn't easy, but it's well worth a stab. All you need is a Larsen trap, an ingenious device reluctantly endorsed by the RSPB. You will also need a live decoy magpie from another neighbour hood, as magpies are highly territorial and will fly inside the trap in an attempt to beat up any bird from outside its manor. Ask around at a farm shop, and the chances are that the old chap behind the counter will know someone who knows where you can get a captive bird. When you get your decoy (the spring is a good time, though it's worth a try now), put it in the trap, pamper it with milk and a dish of Pedigree Chum — and wait.
The birds check in to your magpie motel, and you make sure that they never check out. The trap has a spring-loaded door, which slams shut behind the invader but leaves your decoy bird safe inside. In the breeding season you can get a couple of intruders a day. Simply lift the lid, remove the bird (wear a motorcycle gauntlet for this bit) and whack it on the head with a heavy stick — I use a croquet post. There's a grisly caw, but it's pretty instantaneous. You then bag and bin the bird. Last year I caught 16, and there were queues of others waiting to take their place.
The other method is, of course, shooting. A shotgun is all right if you live on a farm, but these days you need a psychiatric evaluation to get a gun licence, and the chances are that the police will decide that you're a nutter if you rant on about magpies pecking your tits. The only realistic option is an air rifle. But magpies are not easy game. They are canny enough to hang about ten feet beyond range, and they know when you're stalking them. According to one intriguing website, sneaking up on them with your face blacked up works well, though you may feel a bit theatrical.
Dog food is effective as bait to bring them into range, but it attracts foxes, and they're the last thing you want in your garden unless you are the art critic Brian Sewell, who feeds his local foxy-woxies fish and chips. I have lost two lots of chickens to foxes. Of the three birds that survived the second raid, one was wounded, so the others pecked it to death. You soon learn to hate the idiot chickens as much as the clever foxes. Town foxes in my area usually get more sympathy than missing children. Well-meaning people even round them up in the streets, drive them into the country and release them. It's not kind, as the urban fox, which has grown up on a diet of discarded take-aways, suddenly finds itself in a kebab-free habitat where all its food moves. I'd like to know whether they eventually make their way back to the cities.
The only way to scare off foxes is to get a dog. Once you've culled your magpies (having a couple around is enough) you're just left with the squirrels. There's no point feeding your newly liberated songbirds if you've got serious squirrel infestation. These tree rats eat everything, especially bird food. An air gun simply isn't up to the job. For squirrels, you need a trap. My father-in-law, who, much to the delight of the whole parish, caught 168 magpies in 18 months in his Somerset village, now catches squirrels and gives sound advice on the subject.
As bait, he reckons only Sainsbuty's shelled hazelnuts really do the trick. They can't resist them, apparently. The question is how best to dispatch the beast once you've trapped it. His method — an old trick — is to drop the entire cage into a butt of rain water. It's all over very quickly, and you never get bitten. The key thing to remember, he says, is to get the corpse out of the cage before it goes stiff, making it difficult to prise their little claws off the bars. Personally, I can't bring myself to dunk live squirrels, even though The Joy of Cooking (America's number one cookbook) insists that baked grey squirrel with walnut catsup is delicious. Mind you, it also says that roast armadillo tastes like pork, once you've prised the shell off — and who wants to try that?
But the pleasures of a pest-free garden are real. Since I got our magpie population under control, the songbirds have begun singing again and the racket last summer was terrific. Woodpeckers pecked, nuthatches hatched, warblers warbled. My garden is alive once more to the sound of music. The only problem now is stray tomcats. For these, Woolworth's biggest pumpaction super-soaker water pistol is recommended. As Corporal Jones used to say, they don't like it up 'em.
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