Why Does Everyone in Montana Hate This Bird?

It started at a campfire, where a casual mention of magpies somehow turned into twenty minutes of grown adults passionately recounting their personal grievances against a bird. Apparently magpies steal, heckle, harass, spy, bully neighborhood cats and generally behave like tiny flying assholes. I’d never encountered such concentrated hatred for a species, so naturally I needed to investigate: Are Montana magpies actually assholes, or have we just collectively decided they are?