[poohbear]

When I was a kid in north Notts...there were next to no magpies...Then along came modern man with his roads and huge increase in motor vehicles...I've never seen this mentioned elsewhere..but modern roads are the equivalent of McDonalds to members of the crow family.
Every 100 yards is a corpse of a rat,rabbit or hedgehog.This feast over the last 50 years has been a huge bonus to these birds.When I was a kid you never saw these birds in the cities...now there are thousands of them.