Sick magpie

[patsyquinn]

Help! I have a very sick magpie which has been visiting my garden for some time. Today it looks awful and almost got caught by my dogs.
It has lost most of the feathers on its head and the skin looks raw. Its eyes look swollen and it appears to be struggling to stay awake.
What can I do?

[B00]

Nothing i'm afraid, other than keep your dogs away from it. Nature is sometimes cruel and we shouldn't intervene. If you try and catch it and you're successful it will more than likely die anyway from the shock.

No animal authority, like the RSPCA for example, will be interested either.

[Lil O'lady]

Thing is, the magpie is not a pet, and will be alarmed by being caught and handled, and possibly rejected by its kind afterwards cos its smell is wrong.
Let nature take its course - and cruel though this seems, the world is not short of magpies.

[jules77]

i agree with above comments, but if it was me, i would try and catch it, as my husband had a tame magpie when he was a child, even though many people would say they are vermin. He lived in the wild, but used to come in the house and sit on his shoulder.

We caught a sick pigeon some years ago, it was so poorly it let us walk up to it and pick it up, and we kept it in some of those large bread crates, one on the bottom and another on the top for nearly a week while we fed it up, and for years after that it lived in the garden, it even found a mate, so we ended up with two tame wood pigeons. Problem is, I wouldnt know where to start on knowing what is wrong with your magpie.

good luck anyway!!

[patsyquinn]

Thank you all for answering. Although I'm a bit soft I do live in the real world and I know it's a wild thing and also that magpies aren't the most popular birds.
It's the suffering I can't stand.
I didn't really want to handle it because I've picked up so many smaller birds in the past and, by the time they've got to the point where you can handle them, they're also more likely to die.