Deterring Magpies and other larger birds!
With more and more of us choosing to feed our local garden birds, there are more and more pests stumbling upon our patches and making their presence known! Magpies! Highly adaptive and socially intelligent. Some of us enjoy all types of birds and other wildlife visiting our garden or local patch. However, in the case of Magpies, it can be irritating to watch them gobble up all of the food you so kingly put out on your feeders!
So not only are the Squirrels a pest to some of us, but the larger birds are too! Some of us may enjoy the visits of bigger birds, such as Magpies. However, for the majority of us bigger birds and magpies are nothing more than pests that like to eat up all of the food we put out. If they’re not kept sufficiently fed (and lets face it they eat a lot!), they’ll quickly revert to eating the young and eggs of smaller birds and have even been known to swoop at children and pets. For individuals who see many frequent visitors and residents to their garden this can be worrying.
Magpies are seen as social and intelligent creatures. Interestingly, they do not like to be looked at.
Considering how social and intelligent the birds are, they detest being looked at. In Australia where the birds are noticeably violent this has proven to be an effective method of avoiding them. Children will strap paper eyes to the back of their caps to scare off magpies that may otherwise have swooped at them.
Embrace this method, and stick a few pairs of eyes on your walls or trunks near a feeder and they’re unlikely to spend long periods around your garden. Hanging reflective CDs from the trees will produce a similar effect, spooking the creatures further.
Hopefully they’ll prove to be just a passing nuisance, though these techniques aren’t fool proof. In larger areas the eyes and reflective items may not be large or visible enough to scare them off entirely. With their rapidly expanding numbers Magpies can become an urgent problem, and in larger gardens and fields a scarecrow can still be an effective way of repelling them, being far more visible than the options mentioned above.
As long as you use these methods and avoid baiting them through left out meat you should have no trouble keeping magpies out of your garden.
How do we stop magpies ripping the lawn up?
Baby blue tits were nesting in box in my garden one day I watched and no parents going back and forth so I looked in the box and was absolutely gutted to find 5 dead chicks then saw the headless mum or dad at bottom of tree was very distressing as I know it was a magpie that did this.
I witnessed a magpie killing baby great tit chicks after they emerged from the nest box. I tried to chase it away but was too late – it was absolute carnage. I had blue tits nesting in another box and the chicks have gone now – hope they all survived.
I think the magpies keep tabs on nest boxes in the neighbourhood by watching the parents feeding the chicks and just wait for them to come out.
I once counted a dozen magpies in my front garden and they terrorise the area – I have reluctantly removed my nest boxes as it is not safe for songbirds to use them.
I have a family of Magpies constantly in my garden, and one day last week even 4 babies flew into my conservatory. Three of them flew out when I went in but the last one couldn’t find it’s way to the open door and was continuously trying to fly through the closed windows. I was worried it would hurt itself but eventually managed to coax it to the door. But they are ruining lots of my plants, swooping into them and breaking branches off the smaller shrubs in the pots, my garden furniture is constantly covered in dropping and I cannot risk putting washing out. I desperately need a way of preventing them coming down into the garden so much.
I use Waspinators to deter wasps as I am highly allergic to their stings.I noticed that one of these had been shredded showing all the plastic bags that it was stuffed with. Someone said that magpies eat wasps and must have been fooled into thinking it was a real wasp nest. I replaced it and the same thing has happened.
Third time lucky I hope – I will put it in a different place. Fingers crossed
The Australian Magpies are a different species – Gymnorhina tibicen rather than uk Pica pica. I was regularly swooped by the Aussie Magpie cycling to work when I lived there despite putting eyes on my cycle helmet!
that was a clever magpie where did it work
I used CD’s hung from trees but unfortunately none of the other birds are coming to feed now which makes me VERY sad