Friday 14 July 2006

Are magpies protected?

Blasted black and white vermin from the sky. I wandered outside last week and discovered that not only was the lawn full of holes, but half my herbs had suffered a severe cropping. Well ok, the lawn is really half mud, so it was more a mud patch with holes poked in it, and the herbs were pretty straggly, but it is my lawn and herbs dammit!

I was wondering what the heck was going on, since the parsley and coriander had taken a hammering, but the oregano, mint, rosemary, chives and tarragon were good as new. Clearly, something had a taste for salady things.

The answer appeared a few days later - a couple of magpies that were beak deep in the grass, poking around looking for worms and grubs and things. If the lawn is thin, they can punch some good sized holes in the ground - think what a lawn would look like if you bashed 100 cricket stumps into it. I could accept that they were digging up the lawn, but I didn't think that they had a taste for parsley until I saw one sitting in the herb garden daintily plucking away at the fresh shoots.

Can't blame them really - if I was having grubs for breakfast, I'd probably want to season them with a bit of parsley. I am after all the type of guy that loves to smear a bunch of lamb chops in a mixture of rosemary, garlic, pine nuts, honey, mustard and breadcrumbs and bake them in teh oven. Parsley coated grubs are probably doubly delicious.

What they are telling me is that it is time to break out the greenhouse (currently residing in a box in the shed) and assemble it and populate it with parsley. Bugger. There goes Saturday.

Like I said, little black and white bastards.

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