Are your magpies as annoying as our black-billed magpies are here in Canada? They’re beautiful birds, but they love to raise hell on summer mornings over a single bag of trash, or a rotten sack or grapes someone dropped beside the bus stop. I don’t know that I’ve ever woken up peacefully while camping, as magpies are always sure to see me up abruptly at a cool, balmy 4:30am.

What a beauty!

Look out or he’ll steal all your gold.

ONE FOR SORROW!!!

Here in Ireland they have a nursery rhyme about magpies, that they are prophetic depending on their numbers when seen. So much so, that the weaker minded will run around looking for a second one to adjust the current prophecy they believe the little guy is foretelling.

One for sorrow. Two for joy. Three for a girl. Four for a boy. Five for silver. Six for gold. Seven for a secret, never to be told.

There’s another older one also:

One for sorrow. Two for mirth. Three for a wedding, Four for death. Five for silver. Six for gold. Seven for a secret never to be told. Eight for Heaven. Nine for Hell. And ten for the devil’s own sell.

Supposedly the band Counting Crows’ name came from this practice.

Australia:

That’s not a magpie; this is a magpie