Where's Georgie Magpie?

The last three days we haven't seen Georgie, Vicky and Maggie's youngest and, for Maggie, his last child. Georgie would be about eight (months) now, and she has been missing once or twice before, so even though we are worried, this is normal behaviour for a magpie youngster.

It seems that when there is only one child in an age group, that child tends to like scooting off visiting other magpie groups and, eventually, finds a place to go when they leave home. M & V's very first bub, Gemmie, had gone away three or four days at a time on well over a dozen occasions before she finally left home - but when she left, she was still a 'kid' with youthful grey instead of adult black. She would have been about Georgie's present age when she finally went.

In other news, our resident crow group has, at least in part, returned to our area. You may recall they left when Maggie passed away in January. Despite being bigger than magpies and bossing them, the two species seem to get on reasonably well together and the crows even rely on the magpies to get food from humans for them.

Our neighbour's magpie Billy's child Freda, a month maybe older than Georgie, is incorrigible. Despite our having evicted Billy for pestering Vicky, Freda regularly comes for a visit and simply cannot be shooed away. She has followed me around the yard as I filled the water bowls, and we are told she sat and watched our neighbour from right up close as he did some arc-welding. Talk about acclimatised to humans! Gitie thinks Freda is a very special bird, and we are "watching her future career with interest". Let's see if we can learn where she eventually goes and how she gets on in life.