Magpie with Nesting Material

The following description has nothing to do with the image(but I do mention it ever so slightly), but it may make you smile......dare to take the risk and read on?

You may have noticed that there just aren't as many birds around right now as usual in your local area/park.....a young chap did today when I was out in my local park. I was taking a moment to watch the swans nest, this young chap was with his parents, or should I say they were with him, he was about thirty steps ahead of them and got to where I was standing well before them. He stood close by and asked what I was photographing as I had my camera in hand, to which I duly replied mostly birds, but today bugs and flowers and stuff. He looked at me for a moment and said "yeah, there's no birds about today, the feeders are empty" by empty he meant devoid of birds because they had plenty seeds in them. At this point his parents had caught up and turned to the little lad and apologised for him disturbing me...I told them it was fine and was great to see someone so young with an interest in the park and nature. We had a little chat about the swans and why there wasn't many other birds about, I explained to him that they were all sitting on eggs in a nest or feeding young and they would only visit the feeders to have a quick stop and grab a couple seeds for themselves as the babies couldn't eat seed.....they needed juicy bugs and stuff.

As we were talking I did point out a couple of nests(and boxes)which were easy for almost anyone to spot, for him to watch if he wanted to see some birds and a robin who would pop out from the bushes behind where we were standing. But the easiest and most noticable nest was that of a pair of Magpie in a tree on the opposite side of the lake. Noisy and quite aggressive you couldn't miss them, I had even gotten a photo of one flying towards the nest with mud in it's beak....yeah the image above. After a few minutes the little guy was clearly getting bored as he was pointing which way they would be heading off in....so I told him to keep an eye out for a family of flying lollipops when he reached the far end of the lake....kids can look so fun