What does it mean when you see a magpie?

The short answer

In Britain and Ireland, the number of magpies you see is supposed to tell your fortune: one for sorrow, two for joy. A single magpie is unlucky, so people greet it to cancel the bad luck. In China and Korea the same bird is a sign of good news and happiness.

The rhyme

The earliest known version was recorded in Lincolnshire and printed in John Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquities (1780): "One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth." Many versions grew from it. The one most people know today runs: "One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told." It became especially familiar through the 1970s children's television programme Magpie, which used it as a theme song.

Part of the logic is biology. Magpies pair for life and hold territories year-round, so seeing two together is normal. A lone magpie may simply have a mate nearby, out of sight.

Saluting the magpie

To undo the bad luck of a single magpie, people across Britain salute it, tip a hat, or say "Good morning, Mr Magpie, how is your lady wife?", the question acknowledging that its mate must be close by. In some places people spit, or cross their fingers until they see a second bird. The habit is still common; surveys regularly find a large share of Britons admit to doing it.

Older stories explain the bad reputation with Christian legend: the magpie was said to be the only bird that refused to enter Noah's ark, or that didn't mourn at the crucifixion.

A lucky bird in East Asia

In Chinese the magpie is xǐquè, literally "joy bird", and a magpie calling near a house was said to announce good news or a visitor. In the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, celebrated at the Qixi festival, magpies form a bridge across the Milky Way once a year so the separated lovers can meet. Magpies are just as popular in Korea, where they are also seen as bringers of good news.

Magpie myths that science has tested

Magpies are supposed to steal shiny things. A 2014 study at the University of Exeter put piles of shiny and dull objects next to food and found that wild magpies were wary of the shiny items, and took them no more often than dull ones. The thieving magpie seems to come from opera and folklore rather than behaviour.

Their intelligence, on the other hand, is real. In 2008, Eurasian Magpies became the first non-mammals shown to recognise themselves in a mirror, a test passed only by great apes, dolphins and elephants before that. Magpies are members of the crow family and share its problem-solving skills.

Magpies in the garden

Magpies are blamed for the decline of songbirds, and they do take eggs and chicks in spring. BTO analysis of long-term data, however, found no evidence that rising magpie numbers caused the long-term declines in British songbird populations; habitat loss is a far bigger factor. If magpies dominate a feeder, caged feeders let small birds feed while keeping crows and magpies out.

Magpies are also useful. They eat large numbers of leatherjackets, beetles and other garden pests, and clear up carrion. In winter they gather in communal roosts, sometimes dozens strong, which is when you are most likely to see seven for a secret or more.

Other magpie superstitions

Beliefs about magpies vary around Britain. In parts of Scotland a magpie near the window was once said to foretell a death in the house, and in Devon people were said to spit three times on seeing one. Fishermen in some areas treated a magpie on the way to the boat as a reason not to sail.

North America has its own magpies. The Black-billed Magpie, very close to the Eurasian bird, is common across the western plains and mountains, and the Yellow-billed Magpie lives only in California's Central Valley and nearby foothills, found nowhere else in the world.