Week 10, Day 5 (The corruption of innocents)

A very wise man once said 'You remain responsible forever for that which you have tamed".

Another take on this might be "If you teach critters to treat you like a doormat, remember they don't always wipe their feet".

When we moved onto our farmlet back in Feb '99, there was quite a colony of magpies in residence. I didn't have a lot of time for magpies - they suffer from particularly bad press, plus I was somewhat terrorised by one when I was a toddler. It considered our backyard it's territory, and as a wee kid, I found its' swooping charges very frightening. So you could say that even though I really love birds, I wasn't over-enthused about sharing the farm with a couple of dozen magpies.

That all changed in early spring when a savage wind buffeted us and brought down a lot of trees along our fenceline. One of these trees contained a nest with a pair of baby magpies. Far too young to fend for themselves, and with the three cats who owned us at the time and a dozen or so wandering ferals, their chances were slim to none.

The extended family stood guard over the fallen nest, but even their determined efforts weren't going to save these babies. We had to step in.

We collected the nest and the babies, and installed them in a dry fishtank in my craft room. At that time we hadn't built the aviary, so we had about a dozen parrots in the house in a variety of cages. It was vital to keep the bappies (that's bird-lover speak for baby birds) away from the domesticated birds, for reasons of contamination and hygiene.

We decided right from the outset we wouldn't tame these babies, and that they needed to return to the wild as soon as they were flighted. To ensure their flock continued to recognise them, each day we put the nest out on the clothesline in a holder, and watched as their extended family cared for them. By night (or if it was a horrible day), we fed and cleaned up after them, but didn't play with them or try to humanise them in any way.

I learned some amazing things about magpies in this process. It turned my opinion around and that was no easy feat. First of all, when a "feeder" approaches a baby with food, the baby shuffles up and points its bottom over the edge of the nest. This is the feeder's cue to quickly catch the 'bundle' the baby is about to release. Luckily the poop is contained in a membrane, otherwise removal of the faeces when you only have a beak, would be impossible and rather messy. The 'feeder' then takes the bundle of poop (dirty nappy, as it were) far away from the nest to drop - this serves two purposes. The nest remains clean, and no predator can track the babies by the smell of their droppings.

All magpies look alike, but when you see the family dynamic right outside your window, after a while you recognise certain individuals (clue - females are easier to spot in mating season because they lose feathers at the back of their necks when their mates tug on them during mating). We soon identified the parents (Daddy Mags and Mummy Mags), plus some 'teenage' birds (incomplete plumage), and various others who popped in to catch up on the goss and trill their disapproval over human interference.

You know that wonderful magpie song? They don't sing for the joy of it - pretty much no bird does. The magpie's song always contains a message, and the most common of these are as follows:
1. "I'm a big strong gorgeous male (female) and this is why I deserve the best mate. Anyone interested?"

2. Get out of my face! Get out of my space!

3. There's danger overhead! All bird alert to chase off the hawk!

We named the bappies Dirty Harry and Tic Toc, which was entirely based on their potty habits. Harry wasn't too shook on when he'd deliver 'the goods' (and if you think poop smells bad, you ought to get a nostril-ful of the poop of a meat-eating bird!). Tic Toc was as regular and reliable as clockwork.

One morning Harry fledged.. well, he left the nest to return to the wild. He didn't fly - he jumped down and set off at a walk. An hour or so later, Tic Toc did the same. We trailed them from a distance, watching with excitement and a fair amount of sorrow tinged with pleasure, as they found the tree next to where their nest had originally been, and crow-hopped up the branches to safety.

I should mention that during the three weeks we time-shared the bappies, the parents considered us enemies of the state, and would attack on sight (unless we were carrying the nest). You couldn't leave the house without one or both angry magpies swooping down with snapping beaks of death.

Once the babies 'left home' however, they cooled off a lot. Daddy Mags seemed to take the longest to understand that no harm was done, and that we hadn't eaten their children. Mummy Mags, on the other hand, worked it out very quickly - and seemed to think we should take them back. This became very evident when the babies were enrolled in Magpie Creche. You think I'm kidding, don't you. Well gentle reader, I am not.

When you see a colony out your office window every day, after a while you tend to notice structure and group behaviour. Magpie child-raising goes like this:
Nest: Parents oversee raising of the chicks, but a lot of the hard work is done by 'maiden aunts', ie last season's chicks of both sexes. Mostly the 'aunts' are offspring of that bonded pair, but just like human teenagers, sometimes their friends from next door will help out so that chore time gets done quicker. Babies are refuelled at an astonishing rate, and what is more astonishing is that I've yet to see a baby say "thanks very much but I'm full".

Fledgling: Once the baby becomes a fledgling (ie has some flight feathers and begins to learn to fly), they are taken by one or both parents (depending if both fledge at the same time) to learn the basics of food/water gathering. The parent stays with them for 1-2 days, constantly showing the baby what things are good to eat. The baby's role in this is to constantly harp at the parent "Beehrp Beeehrp Beehrp..!" until the parent in great exasperation shoves something in the baby's beak to shut them up for two seconds. (This never works - a baby can simultaneously blarrp and gobble and breathe.. dunno how they do it). After a couple of days of this, either the baby gets the general idea or the parent is about to commit infanticide, so it's time to move on to the next stage.

Magpie Creche: This is usually run by 1-2 adults, and somewhere between 2-6 adolescents. The entire colony's fledglings are left here, allowing the off-duty parents and adolescents some quality time away from Baby. Time to sleep, court, patrol.. Meanwhile back at the creche, the newer additions follow anything black and white bleating for food, and are mostly ignored. The noise can be deafening if you have several new fledglings at one time! After a few hours there is the changing of the guard, when the adults and adolescents are replaced with a new crew. I've never seen the magpie roster posted, but they seem to have one nonetheless. I have seen what happens if a replacement bird is significantly late... they get yelled at a lot, then slapped around.

Once the fledglings have outgrown Creche (takes an average of 3-4 weeks), they move on all by themselves to the next stage...

Flight School: This is really cool to watch. The preferred area seems to be our closest horse paddock, about 30m from the house. Think black and white dogfights of increasing difficulty and hostility. Younglings are taught all the manners they need to be an effective member of the colony, and all the manoevres necessary to keep the colony safe and to impress prospective mates. Death rolls, bomb-dives, soars, flips.. with loud cheers and catcalls from their audience in the trees. Once they 'graduate' from there, the younglings hang around to help out with the next clutch, and sometime after that, the females move on to another colony to find mates.

Sadly, we don't see Daddy Mags around any more. We lost track of him about two years ago when some (insert really nasty word) started shooting magpies around our district. Mummy Mags is still about though, and must have a new man because she's missing feathers at the back of her neck again. This brings me full circle to the opening paragraph. While Tic Toc and Harry never write, never phone, never send so much as a card, Mummy Mags did not care to lose touch with her co-parents. In fact with successive clutches she would bring the new fledgees to me with an expression of frustration and exhaustion that seemed to say "Can you take over again for a while?"

Wayne has befriended Mummy Mags, and she will come down and take food out of our hands when we whistle (and sometimes when we don't.. so don't step outside eating a sandwich!) She also trots up the hallway to raid the catfood bowls - sometimes you're busy working and hear the telltale but too loud "bleerp bleerp bleerp", and realise that Mummy Mags has come in for dinner, bringing several young charges with her.

It means that except on scorching hot days, the back and front doors must remain closed, otherwise we'd be overrun by Mummy Mags and her rostered charges. Thank goodness that even as smart as she is, THIS particular corvid has not worked out how to navigate the cat door!