Magpies can see the future. I just saw one briefly investigating the known site of a pigeon nest, outside my windows. 30 minutes later, a pigeon turns up to do its first reconnoitre of the same site. For some reason the site of a tall hedge is liked for nesting, even though exposed to the north-west wind. But as yet the hedge has no eggy nest for the magpie to raid, and it won’t have for some six weeks. Spring only just started late Friday afternoon, in that glorious pink-sky 5pm stillness, and ‘spring proper’ is still weeks away in the lowland valleys of North Staffordshire.

Yet the intelligent and bold magpie is both remembering where the pigeon nest was last year, and also anticipating a clutch of pigeon-eggs to scoff. At that time the magpies will then fit the slot nature has allotted them, that of population control. Because it wasn’t for the intelligent nest-raiding magpies, we’d be even more overrun with dozy and pestiferous pigeons than we already are.