Better watch out for the maggies!

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!

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 …

i don’t know… but I can say that I have never seen a red maggie flying around…

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?

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..

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.

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.

I would be more concerned about misaligned minor birds.

What: pinko skinks!? What about lezzo lizards?

look on the bright side, at least they aren’t these bastards

pink tailed skinks that ride on recucumbant bikes???

Sorry mate.. 😛

so long as he doesn’t close down the heritage nests I don’t care!!

Perhaps Andrew Barr could close down 39 magpie nests…

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!

Islamic Pies? Mag Extremists? im confused

Maybe magpies are Islamic extremists?

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…

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.

Canberra is also a country town…..

AD if you bring aa to this thread I will hunt you down and feed you to the ants….

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.

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.

feeding them strips of meat just gives them a taste for blood

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. 🙂

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.

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..

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.

then when the magpies are feeding people can capture them and kill them and make MagPie

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.

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.