Magpies undoubtedly eat other birds. During the breeding season, they focus on the young nesting birds and eggs while the parent birds are away searching for food.

How to stop a magpies stealing or eating eggs. Firstly, the obvious solution: collect eggs regularly through the day and don’t leave eggs around outside while performing your chores (it’s easy to forget them and unintentionally attract a magpie or crow).

The diet of a magpie Occasionally, magpies prey on larger animals such as young rabbits. During the breeding season they will take eggs and young of other birds. When food is abundant, magpies hoard the surplus to eat later.

1) Do some birds eat other birds’ eggs? They are intelligent and aggressive and will raid other birds’ nests to steal eggs, young birds, and even the nest itself. So yes, the blue jays in the painting are indeed eating another bird’s eggs.

Foxes. Foxes generally carry eggs away from nests. They may then eat them or they will cache (bury) them for consumption later. The whole egg is taken in the mouth, crushed and the contents eaten.

Adding eggs to your garden provides calcium, an important micronutrient. Calcium in humans and animals is important for bone formation. In plants, it is important for the formation of cell walls. Plants can’t grow without enough calcium in the soil.

Lots of birds do nest on, or under, the ground across the UK, but no birds actually bury their eggs. This rather puzzling occurrence may not have been the work of a bird. I would suspect that a fox has been in the garden.

This is an important nutrient for plants, especially vegetables and fruits. Eggs will leach the calcium into the soil for root uptake during composting, which can conquer such problems as blossom end rot. However, excess nitrogen and low pH will tie up calcium in soil, preventing uptake.

Make your own budget friendly fertilizer. Nitrogen is essential to good fertilizer. When your soil needs a boost, you can add in ground up orange peels. The peels will release the nitrogen and the result is nutrient rich soil your plants will love.

Don’t till wet soils to dry them out. Tilling or driving on wet soils causes compaction. Depending on how fast the rain came and how little residue was on the soil surface, a crust may have formed and some may want to till the field to break up the crust. This should be avoided as the soil may be too wet to do tillage.

Citrus fruit, tomato products and pickled food products can do harm to your compost. High acidity can actually kill the good bacteria that helps break down the material in your compost pile.

Bananas are a suitable compost material, breaking down within the compost to provide a nutrient-rich additive for garden soil. Like other fruit and vegetable matter, the smaller the banana or banana peel pieces, the faster they’ll break down within the compost.