''WE can conclude magpies are not the cause of decline of songbirds,'' said the RSPB spokesman (April 7).

It is difficult to say whether Mr Miles of the RSPB is a liar, plain ignorant, a hypocrite, or a blend of all three, but one thing is for sure - he knows he is free to have his say, safe in the knowledge that by far the majority of urban readers will have no way to know the truth. One can be quite confident that Mr Miles knows full well the statistics, and could quote how many nestlings on average each magpie takes in a season: it's hundreds per bird. Magpies feed their own chicks almost

exclusively on other birds' chicks, taken alive to the magpie's fortress nest, there to be ripped apart and fed to the magpie chicks.

Magpies are vermin. They may lawfully be caught, shot, or otherwise killed at any time by anyone using more or less any humane means, as they are now number-one bird pest throughout Britain.

When we moved to a smallholding in rural Lanarkshire about six years ago, a striking feature was the absence of birds. There wasn't a one - apart from the patrolling magpies. War was declared on magpies. Every time one appeared, which they usually did in pairs, the hunt started and they were shot. Not that shooting magpies is easy, for they seem to have an uncanny sense of danger. But trapping them is easy. Why do such wary magpies almost queue up to jump into a trap? Because they see a stranger bird in their patch, competition no less, and they fully intend to get in there and kill (and then eat) the intruder.

We have operated a Larsen trap for five years. With it we keep our 20 acres more or less a magpie-free zone. As they move in to claim the patch, they are drawn to the trap, and meet their end. Now, what has been the effect?

Wonderful and immediate. In the first year, the fine summer of 1997, a few birds tried late to nest and raise chicks, and most succeeded. We now have clouds of starlings (who have rid us of a plague of daddy-long-legs ever since), sparrows, various tits and finches, robins in such numbers they spend much of their time chasing each other, at least one pair of wrens, wagtails, two pairs of partridges, four or five pairs of blackbirds, swallows by the dozen, and so on.

Let no-one criticise Mrs Lesley Mackiggan [pictured], or me, or Charlie Allan, or any of the thousands more of us who the ''turn-a-blind-eye'' do-gooders would have cease our efforts to protect their birds from this onslaught. Every magpie hunts down other birds as they prepare their nests. They remember where the nests are, and they check progress regularly.

Watch and you will see: a smaller bird with a beakful of food for its nestlings, standing scared to go to the nest because it sees a magpie watching. It's a dilemma for the bird. If it goes to the nest with the food, it reveals its brood to the killer magpie; but if it doesn't, the chicks go hungry.

The magpies are patient; they know the adult bird will dart to the nest, a fatal act, which costs it the lives of its chicks, but not then. No, the magpie waits till the chicks are nice and plump, just before they can fly, and then it arrives and takes them all, one after the other, while the distraught parents bravely but vainly do their best to protect their chicks. Sometimes we see (rather, saw) magpies take swallow chicks newly fledged and flying off the ground in the yard. They just swooped down and grabbed them. I shot one with the baby swallow still in its horrible black beak, and the wee swallow survived to fly away.

But no longer in this little patch. Killing of birds there will be, but I will be doing it. If I kill a dozen or two magpies each spring we save upwards of several hundred nestlings a year to take their chances in the natural way of things. I don't kill anything for fun. I kill vermin and pests because they compete for resources, just as avid gardeners do by killing living things, using poisons to kill slugs and snails and creepy-crawlies ravaging their vegetable patches and flower-beds.

Life is tough. Too many people see it through rose-tinted eyes. Those of us who act don't attack the ones who don't. All we ask is to be left alone to get on with our never-ending battles to protect the little birds for us all, and that includes everyone in Bearsden, and even the RSPB. If you want to see little birds in your garden, don't bother the magpie trappers, and don't listen to fairy stories from the discredited RSPB.

Charles F Young,

15 Holding, Cathburn Road,

Morningside, Newmains.