Magpie Hatching Stones ¬- TWICE
In mid-May this year a Finnish common magpie (pica pica) did something strange. It started hatching small roundish stones, not eggs, in a small dent in the ground instead of a nest made of twigs up in a tree. Quite soon, the weather, however, turned cold and very rainy. It even snowed. As a result, the sudden return of winter made the magpie leave its nest and stop hatching.
But two weeks later, in June, the magpie started, to my great surprise, hatching the same stones again. However, this time the weather was almost the opposite of what it had been during the previous hatching. It was very warm, and the magpie, whose nest was in an open yard and not up in a tree as it should have been, had no shade from the burning sun. And what made the magpie’s situation even worse was that this time it had no companion to bring it any food.
So it had no chance of surviving alive for very long in that weather. That is why we decided to stop the hatching by placing a metal bucket over the nest.
However, before that, we made a short "scientific" experiment: An ordinary white chicken egg was placed in the nest to see how the magpie would react to it. Would it eat it or start hatching it? And, as you can see on the video, it started hatching the egg as if it was its own.
Quite soon after that, the experiment was stopped, and the bucket was placed over the nest. Now we are looking forward to seeing what will happen next year.