Looking Back: The magpie massacre of the 1930s

MEEKER — The songbirds return to Meeker seems a little premature with our recent snowstorms but their sound was welcomed as a harbinger of spring. There was a time that the familiar sight and sound of one of their species was not so welcome and a local organization put a bounty on the noisy black and white jays to try and reduce their population. The cyclical population explosion of various varmints was recalled by many…