Belinda rescued this gorgeous white-backed baby magpie. White-backed magpies are found mostly in Western Australia and South Australia. Here along the Eastern side of Australia, we only get black-backed magpies. Occasionally a white backed magpie from South Australia migrates to our region, like Bertie and his sister.
Earlier I told you about one of the "phrases" magpies have taught us - the "J phrase", which your friendly magpie will use if (s)he wants you to follow him or her. Vicky Magpie used it to take us to her babies.
But what if your friend wants to point you in a certain direction, but does not want you to actually go there? That's what the "b phrase" is for. Your friend flies towards you, and then flies in a slow circle around and above you, like a letter "b":
Juvi magpies - Shelly (left) with sister Nelly at our back door.
Will a wild bird (never handled or hand fed) walk into a cage just because you ask her to?
Juvi magpie Shelly injured herself on the day of the terrible storms resulting in the inland tsunami in Toowoomba and the Lockyer valley. She didn't come down with her family for two days. Due to the heavy rains we couldn't go out into the neighbouring paddocks looking for her either. We thought she may have met a tragic end in the storms, but when the rains stopped briefly on the third day Ron went scouting and found her sitting still in a paddock. Relieved to find her alive, Ron and I would go out to the fields to feed her when we could. A few days later she started to walk but after 3 weeks she still could not fly. She could only climb up tree trunks by hopping along along fallen branches that were still leaning against them as in the picture below.
Australian magpies Shelly and Nelly are about six months old. They are Vicky and Bertie's second set of kids. They love playing around are backyard, tumbling around, playing tug-o-war, pouncing on crows and bossing currawongs. Always on the alert, they are quick to chase goannas and snakes away or put out alarms of eagles soaring in the sky.
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