“There are many rhymes about magpies, but none of them is very reliable because they are not the ones that the magpies know themselves.”

“Two things attract magpies: sparkly stuff and roadkill. This particular funeral is a jackpot for magpies.”

“But you know me-I'm an information magpie, always interested in shiny bits of intel. I've never gotten in trouble because of knowing too much.”

“My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information.”

“We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.”

“Simon remembered a rhyme his mother used to recite to him, about magpies. You were supposed to count them and say: one for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret that's never been told. "Right," simon said. He had already lost count of the numbers of birds there were. Seven, he guessed. A secret that's never been told. Whatever that was.”