*Ø* Blogmanac September, Australia | Watch out for magpies

Magpies are now nesting, swooping innocent passers-by

An Australian remedy for the attack of the highly territorial nesting magpies is to wear a helmet with false eyes attached to the back, as the birds often attack the face.

Craig Whiteford, manager of flora and fauna with the Department of Sustainability and Environment in the south west region of Victoria, advised that during breeding season the birds might feel threatened and act aggressively.

The Australian birds have become naturalised in New Zealand, where they were first released by acclimatisation societies in 1864 to combat pasture insects. In the “Shaky Isles” they are often seen as a pest and they continue the swooping behaviour for which they are well known in their home country.

“Formerly ‘maggot-pie’, maggot representing Margaret (cf Robin redbreast, Tom-tit, and the old Phyllyp-sparrow, and pie being pied, in allusion to its white and black plumage.

The magpie has generally been regarded as an uncanny bird; in Sweden it is connected with witchcraft; in Devonshire it was a custom to spit three times to avert ill luck when the bird was sighted; in Scotland magpies flying near the windows of a house foretold death. The old rhyme about magpies seen in the course of a walk says:

One's sorrow, two's mirth.
Three's a wedding, four's a birth'
Five's a christening, six a dearth,
Seven's heaven, eight is hell'
And nine's the devil his ane sel'. "

Evans, Ivor H, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988

Two hospitalised after magpie attacks
Australian man killed by bird attack
Hear magpie