what do you think of this

[blackswan]

while working in newtongrange today  my mate spotted a magpie sitting at the side of the road with the head twisted and looking to the sky just as if it had p m v,

[thunderboult]

hit by a car probaly.

[Guest Owen]

I don't know much about the diseases that wild birds like magpies get. But if the street pigeons I see hanging about the towns are any thing to go by, they must have illnesses. So I think it is perfectly possible that the magie has got something nasty.

I remember reading about the damage that house sparrows could do at the racing stables. Apparently they will scrounge for food in the feeding troughs, leaving all sorts of nasty diseases behind. And I also saw a study of sparrows. It concluded that they were carriers of things like canker, repiritory disease and salmonella, to say the least of it.

So there is no doubt that magpies must contract plenty of bugs, which means that some are ill and some die.