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Updated: May 12, 2025
There is a plantation of fir and ash on the slope, and a narrow waggon-way enters it, and seems to lose itself in the wood. Always approach this spot quietly, for whatever is in the wood is sure at some time or other to come to the open space of the track. Wood-pigeons, pheasants, squirrels, magpies, hares, everything feathered or furred, down to the mole, is sure to seek the open way.
As though they understood one another, the rain and the mat began prattling of something rapidly, gaily and most annoyingly like two magpies. Yegorushka knelt up or rather squatted on his boots. While the rain was pattering on the mat, he leaned forward to screen his knees, which were suddenly wet.
There were no leaves on the branches only monkeys: big red monkeys, which they call "Beroks," and little gray fellows, which they call "Wahwahs." These monkeys were strikingly silhouetted against the crimson sunset in strange tropical fashion. From the tips of those dead trees down to the lowest branches dozens of monkeys stood like sentinels, or romped like children, or chattered like magpies.
But the wren takes the place of the robin as far as tameness and impertinence are concerned, as in winter he attaches himself to the peasant's cottage and makes himself quite at home, being known either as "Peter-of-the-Afternoon" or as "Tommy-round-the House." Magpies also are great favourites with the country people at this season, as they become quite tame, and hop in and out of the cottages.
The sunlight filtered through the leafy thickets awaking to song the forest birds. Magpies in spotless black and white flirted past, alighting near by with a hop and bound and twitch of the tail. Blue and white jays with rosy breasts shrieked through the trees, and a low-sailing hawk wheeled among the fields of ripening wheat, putting to flight flocks of twittering hedge birds.
"I did expect to have a smack at some of those magpies, if only for the sake of washin' the paint an' feath-ahs off 'em with a jet of steam." "They came quite near enough to be pleasant, Walker. Their flank march was almost a surprise; if a swarm of vicious savages had succeeded in reaching the decks well, we might have beaten them off, but it would have been touch and go."
Magpies, grackles, cat birds, and many other of the winged tribe, appeared in considerable numbers among the trees, or disporting themselves on the lake or river. "It is so long since we have had a gallop, that I vote we take a good long one," exclaimed Norman; and Sybil and Effie, whose spirits had also risen, expressed their readiness to do as he proposed.
We have been so unfortunate as to lose two valuable members of the troupe, Zerbine and poor Matamore, rendering many of our best plays impossible for us, and at any rate we cannot give dramatic representations that would bring in much money here in the fields, where our audience would be mainly composed of crows, jackdaws, and magpies who could scarcely be expected to pay us very liberally for our entertainment.
The crows, ravens, and magpies started up in terror at the yelling and shouting that sounded around. They flew into the tower and out again, they looked down upon the throng below, and they also looked into the windows of the church, and screamed out aloud what they saw there.
Magpies are still of awful authority in village life, according to their number, &c.; for a striking illustration of which we may refer the reader to Sir Walter Scott's Demonology, reported not at second-hand, but from Sir Walter's personal communication with some seafaring fellow-traveller in a stage-coach.
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