Do Magpies Kill Songbirds? What the Evidence Says

Yes, magpies take the eggs and chicks of other birds, and occasionally an adult bird. But the large British studies have not found that magpies caused the fall in songbird numbers, and studies of farmland birds point mainly to changes in farming.¹ This page sets out the evidence, study by study, with what magpies do in gardens and how to protect nests without harming them. It is about the Eurasian Magpie; for the bird itself, see the Magpie guide.

Yes. Magpies eat birds' eggs and nestlings, and very occasionally catch an adult bird; Birds of the World notes that locally their nest raids can hit other birds hard. Most of their food, though, is invertebrates, with carrion, seeds and fruit.² In a study of urban magpies in Manchester, the summer diet of adults and chicks included few eggs or nestlings.³ More on their food: what magpies eat.

When cameras are put on songbird nests, magpies are seldom the culprits. A review of 46 British nest-camera studies, covering 2,088 nests of songbirds, waders and other birds, found magpies rarely recorded taking songbird nests. Jays and birds of prey took the largest shares of songbird broods (23% and 21%), and the crow family took 31% of songbird clutches, with Jays the main egg-takers. The songbird studies were mostly in woodland, though, and farmland and gardens were poorly covered.⁴ A review of 80 British studies attributed 24% of songbird nest predation to the crow family as a whole; open-cup nesters breeding while magpies and Jays feed their own young suffered the highest rates.⁵

Not according to the national studies. Magpie numbers in Britain rose by an average of 4-5% a year between 1966 and 1986. A BTO analysis of that period found that nest success did not fall in any of 15 songbird species, rose in four (Song Thrush, Greenfinch, Starling and Yellowhammer), and was not related to the number of magpies on farmland or in woodland. The authors found no evidence that more magpies had harmed songbirds, while noting that some effects might not show up in such a study.⁶

Later work pointed the same way. A national analysis of 23 songbird species found that their year-to-year changes were no different at sites with and without magpies and Sparrowhawks.⁷ A study of 29 bird populations in England found no evidence, for 22 of them, that the rise in magpies, crows, Jays and other predators had held their numbers down; for the other seven it could not rule an effect out, and as a study of patterns it could not prove cause either way.⁸ The BTO's summary is that magpies taking eggs and chicks does not lower songbird numbers across whole populations.⁹ The RSPB's former magpie page, describing BTO analysis it commissioned of 35 years of records, said songbird numbers were no different where magpies were many or few, and that taking eggs and chicks, though "upsetting to witness", is "completely natural".¹⁰

Reviews agree, with caveats. A review of 42 studies found no negative effect of crows, ravens and magpies in 81% of cases, and magpies were less likely than crows to cut other birds' breeding success.¹¹ A review of predation in the UK found "little evidence that predation limits populations of pigeons, woodpeckers and passerines", though it can for some seabirds, waders and gamebirds.¹² A 2020 review for Defra found "medium-high" strength of evidence that magpies can affect wild birds, but nearly all of the strongest studies had confounding factors, mostly the removal of several predators at once, so the effect could not be put down to magpies specifically.¹³ And a 2022 BTO report for Natural Resources Wales knew of no case where high magpie numbers had been shown to cause a decline, while warning that the lack of studies is "an evidence gap rather than evidence of no impact".¹⁴

Each study is described in more detail above and below; full references are in the Sources.

Locally, magpies can be the main nest predator. In a study of urban Blackbirds, fewer than 5% of nests produced young, and most of the nest predation that could be identified was by magpies, though most failures had no known cause.¹⁵ On the University of Reading campus, artificial Blackbird-style nests near filled peanut feeders were taken far more often (88.6%, or 76.5% where the feeder had a guard) than nests near empty feeders (51.5%); magpies made 37 of the 74 predations. The authors called artificial nests "indicative rather than definitive", and it is not known whether this affects bird numbers.¹⁶ On Warwickshire farmland, magpies were the main predators of artificial nests, especially inside breeding magpies' territories late in the season, and some sites were hit again and again, perhaps by particular birds.¹⁷

Removing magpies alone has had little measurable effect on songbird breeding. When magpies were removed from suburbs near Paris for three years, it made very little difference to how many young the songbirds raised.¹⁸ On farmland in southern England, where crows and magpies were controlled together, nest success was about 10% higher; the authors' data suggest hole-nesting species contributed most, and open-cup nesters as a group did no better.¹⁹ Removing several predators at once, magpies among them, has raised songbird breeding success in some farmland studies, but those studies cannot separate the magpie's part.¹³

For farmland birds, the main causes found are changes in farming: weedkillers, sowing cereals in autumn instead of spring, drainage and more intensive grassland, and more livestock. The RSPB's former magpie page put intensive farming first too, and Martin Harper wrote on the RSPB's site in 2016 that "the evidence that breeding songbird numbers are limited by predation is weak".²⁰ The BTO notes that nest predators such as crows, magpies, Sparrowhawks and grey squirrels have increased and may matter locally, but studies have failed to find a significant effect at a national scale for many prey species.²¹

Magpies are not the only predator in a garden. Pet cats in Britain were estimated to have brought home 27 million birds between April and August 1997, a figure that counts only what they carried home.²² Across British towns, areas with more cats had fewer kinds of breeding birds, while the numbers of magpies, crows and Jays were not strongly negatively linked to bird numbers.²³ The two can interact: in Sheffield, a model cat placed near Blackbird nests cut the parents' feeding visits and was followed by much more nest predation, chiefly by the crow family.²⁴ On nest cameras across Britain, Jays and birds of prey took the largest shares of songbird broods.⁴

Magpies can seem to be everywhere because there are more of them, and more live near people. UK magpie numbers more than doubled between 1967 and 2024 (up 104%), rising until the late 1980s and stable since; they have colonised many towns and suburbs since the 1960s, and the Breeding Bird Survey now finds them most often in towns.⁹ Magpies grew fastest on mixed and grazing farms²⁵, and in a British city their distribution was most closely linked to the number and variety of trees.²⁶

The charities' advice is about helping nests stay hidden, not about removing magpies. Hedges, shrubs and climbers help hide nests from predators, and the RSPB asks people not to cut hedges between March and September, the main nesting season.²⁷

For nest boxes, the BTO advises putting small-hole boxes 1-3 m up, hiding open-fronted boxes among shrubs or creepers, keeping them out of reach of cats and squirrels and away from bird feeders.²⁸ The RSPB notes that open-fronted boxes are the kind the crow family can raid, and advises boxes without a perch.²⁹ The Reading authors suggest using guarded feeders and thinking about whether to feed birds in the breeding season at all.¹⁶ The RSPB's 2026 advice already pauses seed and peanuts from May to October, for disease reasons.³⁰

Like all wild birds, magpies, their eggs and their nests in use are protected by law in Great Britain³¹ and Northern Ireland.³² General licences allow authorised people to kill or take magpies for set purposes: in England, to conserve wild birds of conservation concern or to prevent serious damage through attacks on livestock, making reasonable efforts with other lawful methods before and while using them^{33, 34}; in Scotland, to conserve wild birds or prevent serious damage^{35, 36}; in Northern Ireland, to prevent disease and serious damage and, from March to August, to conserve wild birds.^{37, 38} None of the Welsh general licences for 2026 names the magpie.³⁹

Magpies lose nests too. In a Cotswolds study, Carrion Crows ate magpie eggs and chicks, and magpie pairs nesting near crows raised fewer young.⁴⁰ More on magpie nesting.

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2. Kirwan, G. M., Madge, S., Christie, D. A., Perlman, Y. (2025). Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica), version 1.1. Birds of the World (G. M. Kirwan, editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology. doi:10.2173/bow.eurmag1.01.1
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4. Barton, M. G., Conway, G. J., Henderson, I. G. et al. (2025). Meta-analysis of predator identity in nest-camera studies in the British Islands. Ibis 168(1): 42-62. doi:10.1111/ibi.13436
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24. Bonnington, C., Gaston, K. J., Evans, K. L. (2013). Fearing the feline: domestic cats reduce avian fecundity through trait-mediated indirect effects that increase nest predation by other species. Journal of Applied Ecology 50(1): 15-24. doi:10.1111/1365-2664.12025
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