Local ABC 666 was reporting at their mid-day bulletin that another outcome of the ACT Governments tough budget will be that Environment ACT (or Urban Services or whatever their called now) will no longer be dealing with problem or nuisance magpies. Seems that previously if you got jack of a magpie swooping you every time you left the house you could call a hotline and a nice man from the Government would come around with a slug-gun and dispose of the nuisance bird.
Vicki Dunn has apparently been quoted as saying that this is yet another example of the kind of services that Canberran’s will have to get used to living without because of the Stanhope Governments incompetent financial management.
Wo Hoo,
Next one injured gets to sue the local council.
At least various councils in QLD have taken action against dangerous palm trees, lest they drop coconuts on an unsuspecting tourist…
At least the govmit here could do the same for those pesky birds.
But if it gets bad enough, I can post the instructions that my Daddy showed me to build yer own ‘problem solvin’ maggie shoota… Worked back before there was a govmit to worry about.
Just expanding on an idea someone posted in another thread – seeing as the roo carcasses aren’t being collected, if you’ve got a swooping problem, collect a carcass and drop it where the maggies are nesting.
The maggies will love you for the food source and, in theory, stop swooping.
That is my theory and it is mine, cough, cough.
Just feed the little buggers strips of meat and they’ll love you for life….
then when the magpies are feeding people can capture them and kill them and make MagPie
Untill you move, then they will get narky at the others who are still there. Especially the children, who cant defend themselves.
Us adults can pick up a stick, and take a swing back, but the 3 year olds simply get attacked.
Shouldn’t be protected in my books.
apologies for making the worst joke ever… I just couldn’t resist…
I actually got swooped last year for the first time in about 15 years.. it shocked me a little… the worst thing is these maggies are nesting on the walk to the pub.. so I can’t exactly tame them..
Lob a brick at the bloody things – stop farkin about with people from the Gvmt coming to sort out our lives for every little trauma. If you have kids hang around with them like you’re supposed to remember.
I used to love wandering around as a kid waiting for a maggie to swoop me.
It scared the willies out of us, but man, it was so much fun…
My God, they’re only aggressive for a few weeks a year, and that’s usually because people are arseholes and provoke them by throwing shit at them. Kids need scarring up a little anyway, and what more Australian way than by having a magpie take a chunk out of your temple?
We’re breeding a nation of soft little wankers, and the ANZACS would be appalled.
I’ve never met a magpie that I didn’t like.
feeding them strips of meat just gives them a taste for blood
I think it’s symptomatic of the very urban existence we share here in Canberra and the fact that we – as a population it seems – feel that ‘someone’ should come and fix all myriad of problems rather than getting on with it ourselves.
I recall, years ago, speaking to a ranger who had just shifted from ACT Parks to the NSW NPWS across in Queanbeyan – she told me that one of the good things about working in Queanbeyan was that she very rarely got called out to deal with snakes. In Canberra, when someone sees a snake in their yard their first response is to call the Government and have someone come and take it away – rangers were kept busy with snake duties all through the warmer months. Her belief was that in Queanbeyan, people felt capable of dealing with it themselves – either by just ignoring it until it moved on or by getting a shovel from the shed and dispatching the scaly beastie themselves – she put it down to Canberra being a city and Queanbeyan being a country town.
yup this nation is breeding a bunch of wimps… I blame JW Howard and all his over protectiveness with terrorists and stuff..
okay well thats a bit over the top and a blatant off topic attempt… that I will now retract.
AD if you bring aa to this thread I will hunt you down and feed you to the ants….
Canberra is also a country town…..
The problem isn’t that people can’t take care of the magpies, it’s that up until now the Government has preferred to relocate them rather than have them killed.
Obviously The Stanhope Government has decided they’d rather go back to the old ways.
No I think this is more aa’s flavour – if maybe the humans would just stop attacking magpies then the magpies will stop attacking us…
Maybe magpies are Islamic extremists?
Islamic Pies? Mag Extremists? im confused
Actually, I got my first serious Magpie attack ever last year (I’m in my thirties). So are the maggies getting more ruthless in recent years?
And can we blame Stanhope or the local courts for this, somehow? Stronger penalties for magpies!
I agree with Mr Evil,
No Australian kid should be allowed to grow up without having been terrorised (ooh, there’s that word again) by a rampant aerial bombardment from an angry magpie.
I love em….
AD…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA..
I just snorted black coffee out of my nose…
Perhaps Andrew Barr could close down 39 magpie nests…
Sorry mate..
so long as he doesn’t close down the heritage nests I don’t care!!
Then Corbell can sell the nests to developers, then retract it and give the nests back to the magpies before relocating the developers to a caravan park where there are pink tailed skinks or…
Now I’m confused…
pink tailed skinks that ride on recucumbant bikes???
look on the bright side, at least they aren’t these bastards
What: pinko skinks!? What about lezzo lizards?
I would be more concerned about misaligned minor birds.
Ahh, The dangers of owning a herritage nest.
Best to “renovate” it with a bulldozer a couple of years before it ends up on the herritage list. That way, people will be able to paint it whenever they want.
A light rail network should be built to transport these buggers away.
Although the noise will undoubtedly be a *HUGE* problem for the inner north residents though.
Maybe we should get a mediator in and they can ‘talk’ to the magpies and everything will be happy happy hippie joy joy and we can all go off hand in hand down the garden path in joyous rapture knowing that everyone has been consulted and is in agreeemtn at a non dive bombing or brick throwing protocol.
I’m sure the UN could ratify that quickly in, say, 5 to 6 years…
what ever happens out of this interesting situation… we can all be sure that john stanhope will raise the maggies as a national issue on par with stem cell research, anti-terror laws and who should win father of the year..
What if we employed the magpies as conductors and drivers of the said light rail?
Or we could simply put them in the gaol when it’s built….
Thumper, before we rush to mediation, wouldn’t it make more sense to consult broadly and widely with the community and have consultants come in to develop a feasibility study and position paper?
But are they conservative or leftie maggies?
I could have said, are they right wing or left wing, or both…
Okay, bad attempt at a pun…
Big Al,
yes. And then after a decision is made, then hold the consultation.
And then wait for the magpies to mount a legal challenge.
i don’t know… but I can say that I have never seen a red maggie flying around…
Definitely lefty. Think about it – a magpie will always wait until you are not looking at them before swooping down and snapping a chunk of scalp off of the back of your head. If they were conservative they would look you in the eye as it attacked – and you’d know it was going to hurt, but you couldn’t help feeling like you probably deserved it …
Yes, it’s all black and white now. No grey areas…
Apparently one of the reasons that the Government has stopped dealing with the nuisance magpies is to stem the flow of bird swooping to the private sector. Apparently wealthy parents are increasingly preferring to have their children swooped privately!
at least that way they are assured of swooping… but then again coming from a family with money doesn’t always mean that a child is worthy of a decent swooping.
mods please stop us
Magpies will be swooping on Sunday and confirm the wooden spoon as belonging to carlton
Put the magpies in the gaol when it built?
Shit, they could be the darn guards!
magpies learn… some post grad, or somethin, at CSU, demonstrated with a couple of people. they’d walk through a magpies territory, and just keep goin.
the other guy, he’d eye off the magpie, and seem threatening to it.
3 years later, same group of people, magpie continued to attack the guy that was threatening, but not the other ones.
moral to the story, if it swoops, bash it.
Nah,
leave the maggies alone. As I said, all Australian kids should have the right to be swooped by a magpie at least once in their lives.
To not be swooped is to be unAustralian.
Explain that to the Tuggeranong family who had their 3yo daughter’s eye taken out by a magpie.
If they swoop when they aren’t being threatened (i.e someone casually strolls past them or has the audacity to ride their bike within 300m of a nest) then they should be eradicated.
The last thing a magpie will do is going anywhere near my child
interesting things i know about magpies:
around geelong in vic the aboriginal name for magpie is broworrona (roughly)
magpies in vic have reverse black and white markings to magpies in the act.
they have long memories.
older magpie beaks turn very white.
they prefer to swoop blondes (i dont know why)
i have NEVER been swooped by a magpie despite walking daily through known swoop zones.
thats all i got.
I was told that the boundary between the southern magpies and the northern ones (as described by Bonfire) is actually just south of here near Michelago … no idea if its true or not.
There are a few of the southern-type magpies around Canberra, it’s really quite a striking difference when you see them among the northern-style mob.