The Crime Wave
There seem to be two creatures that are much on the increase, especially perhaps on the western side of England. They are the magpie and the mole. In parts of Gloucestershire magpies are now so numerous that they have become a common garden bird ; and their numbers have encouraged, so it is inferred, their thievish instincts. One resident watched from the house a pair carrying off lumps of coke from the yard, as if the birds too were afraid of suffering from the fuel shortage. What they did with the booty no one knows. More seriously they have become a menace to poultry-keepers, and in one place at any rate have made disastrous raids on chickens. The reason for their increase is doubtless the fall in the number of keepers and game-preservers. Whatever may be said against the "larders" of some keepers, they have certainly been the chief cause of the number of our small birds, whose worst enemies are birds of the crow family.
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