Magpie

Vicky's bubs are very late this year, due to the whole family stopping their normal activities when Sophie was sick. And a week ago one of the two bubs in the nest disappeared. It was there one morning and gone that afternoon. I searched the land under the nest thoroughly, but found no dead bird, so we fear that maybe a hawk or a goanna took it.

Just a quick note to tell you about a remarkable thing that happened this morning.

Both our magpie families have babies now. Billy, our neighbour's magpie, who can't resist stopping by for a feed whenever he sees me, and his mate Polly have two new bubs out of the nest but still staying in the trees and waiting for food to be brought to them. Meanwhile, their bubs from last year, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, are acting more baby-like to keep on getting attention, even though many one-year-old magpies have already left home by this stage.

Can 'mere birds' hold conferences? It seems so. On Saturday, I drove down to the local shop and, on the way back, was startled to see twenty magpies (I counted them) approaching Maggie's territory from the southwest. The whole lot alighted on Maggie's 'main tree', which I could just see by looking upwards through the windscreen. (Yes, I did first stop the car!)