As I write this, I can hear a wood pigeon, a couple of sparrows and a blackbird. To be fair, everything's a bit quiet out there at the moment. When there's food and fresh water to be had, it's the bird equivalent of central Paris at rush hour, only instead of cars and tourists it's feathery fliers zooming about all over the place. The enormous corvids sit at the top of the pecking order - jackdaws, crows, rooks and, of course, magpies. Familiar yet enigmatic, I already wanted to know more about these intriguing birds when I heard about '
George: A Magpie Memoir' by Frieda Hughes.
