Les arrivistes Do magpies still recall the Pliocene? If so (and who’s to contradict them while they strut about our lawns and chortle from our rooves?) they surely must disdain us as mere upstarts or the saddest parvenus, flightless bipeds, not well-feathered, alas the most mundane of arrivistes, so rarely breaking into song—and when we do it’s all off-key and plainly amateur. Of course, to them, we’ve been of some small use. Our watered and well-tended lawns were rich with insects, our garden beds all coiled with worms. And, like them, we are territorial; we like our landscapes scissored…