A Hunter's Bag near a Tree Stump with a Magpie, Known as 'The Contemplative Magpie'

There is an old fable in which the birds met to choose a king. Most of them wanted the peacock, for its splendid feathers, until the magpie asked how a bird so beautiful would protect them when danger came. Melchior d'Hondecoeter set that magpie on a tree stump above a heap of dead game, ducks and a goose hanging from the branches and lying on the ground. The Dutch later nicknamed the picture the philosophising magpie.

He painted it around 1678 for William of Orange, as the reply to the peacock in its companion canvas, and the Rijksmuseum reads the pair as a lesson for a prince, that a ruler has to be able to defend his people as well as make a fine show. On the left lie the stakes and net of a bird-catcher, and at the right Hondecoeter signed his initials, M.D.H., on a bird cage.