Zosia feels at home at the Biedronka on Dolne Młyny Street. She visits the store often and with pleasure. She perches beside the cashiers, checks how shoppers manage at the self-checkout tills, and poses charmingly for photos.
Magpies are sociable, live in family groups, and are exceptionally intelligent. They passed the famous mirror test: when looking in a mirror, they knew that they were seeing their own reflection rather than another bird. Many animal species fail the test and regard their own reflection as another member of their species. Human children pass the mirror test after the age of three.
Magpies take great care of their young. They build nests at the very tops of trees, and their construction is carefully designed with safety in mind. A magpie nest has a roof that protects the chicks from rain and snow as well as from predators, and it also has two entrances—one of them is an emergency exit.
In his opera The Thieving Magpie, Gioacchino Rossini blamed the bird for the servant’s misfortune, while Jan Brzechwa also wrote a charming rhyme about a lying magpie. However, scientists refute the claim that magpies like shiny objects and steal them.
According to folk beliefs, a chattering magpie announces the arrival of guests or the approach of important events. In China, the magpie is considered a messenger of good fortune—there is a saying there: “When the magpie chatters, good things will come.”
