A gardener on TikTok shared a heartwarming clip of their yard's latest visitors.
The short but sweet video posted by gardeninggee (@gardeninggee) opens with the caption, "Garden has some new visitors." A closer look shows several magpies making themselves at home. "Never seen this many magpies before," the next caption reads. It ends with a close-up of one of them hopping around the rim of a pot, with the last caption: "Beautiful."
@gardeninggee Hey fellas!!! #magpie #birds #rspb #garden #birdlovers ♬ Polar Express - ❄️🎄- Toby -🎄❄️
The grey skies and the tag saying #rspb (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) imply this delightful scene took place somewhere in Britain. According to the RSPB, magpies are found throughout England and Wales and much of Scotland. Magpies are easily identifiable with their white and black plumage. The latter gives a "purplish-blue iridescent sheen to the wing feathers and a green gloss to the tail" when seen close-up.
Magpies are chatty and intelligent birds whose notorious reputation for thieving shiny objects doesn't stand up to scholarly scrutiny. A study by the University of Exeter found that they actually shy away from bright objects. In 64 tests, the birds only made off with a glittery prize twice, and on both occasions, they ditched their loot immediately in favor of food.
The Eurasian magpie is a bit of an all-rounder in the ecosystem. They keep insect populations under control, spread nutrients, and, as occasional scavengers, act as avian clean-up crews. As the video showed, they do pretty well among people.
The clip shows the positive impact of gardening with native plants: It welcomes helpful, if a noisy, species like the magpie. Rewilding a yard also helps a homeowner save money and effort in maintaining it. All kinds of useful little creatures may show up if you just give them the right space.
The video's comments were full of appreciation for the uploader's new feather friends.
"Got me saluting my god d*** phone," one commenter said.
Another reply swooned, "I love magpies. Thankfully I see a lot of them around where I live."
"They are so beautiful and so funny," added another.
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