Vive la magpie! I, for one, welcome the breeding season of our feathered overlords

Plenty of people look at swooping season with dread, and they’re wrong.

Magpies are smart; magpies are funny; magpies have a beautiful song – when I lived in New Zealand the sound I missed most was magpies warbling in the morning.

For those who are interested, they have a number of Spotify playlists.

Magpies also don’t take any crap from their neighbours and honestly, who can blame them?

We humans are often terrible neighbours. We destroy habitat to make our homes and then get cranky when the original inhabitants stick around and ruin our landscaping.

We keep predators in our backyard and do little more than shake our heads when they murder any wild creatures they can get their paws on.

Kids – and adults who should know better – often amuse themselves by teasing wildlife. Sometimes they amuse themselves by doing far more horrible things, like smashing eggs or beating kangaroos to death.

Magpies are not putting up with it.

And in fairness to them, they do their best to be fair to us. If you have resident magpies in your yard, or on your street, and you make a year-round effort to befriend them, you’re unlikely to be swooped.

I had no idea magpies swooped at all until I started high school. We had a family of them who would often come up to the verandah to say hi, or pinch a bit of mincemeat (I know not to feed them mincemeat now, but this was the 90s).

They were always interested in what we were doing, and when they had babies we loved watching the clumsy little buggers try to figure out how to fly, or sulk on the ground because mum and dad had stopped feeding them full-time.

I know other people have had less *ahem* positive interactions with these staunch defenders of the nest.

But when so many people are rotten to them, how are they supposed to know you’re one of the good ones?

It’s not that they’re birdbrained. Magpies simply have their own secret bird business to be about.

Policing the streets while raising chicks means they don’t have time to suss out every bipedal ape on a bicycle who comes screaming through their turf.

Possibly if we had more magpies they’d have the resources they needed to do a more thorough background check before they dive-bombed.

I find the best approach is, if I see a magpie, to make good, firm eye contact, say hello and introduce myself politely.

I make no sudden movements and keep my hands visible at all times.

I make it clear that I’m just passing through and have no egg-stealing intentions (mostly by thinking very hard “I am not here to hurt you” and walking in a straight line).

For the past 33 years it’s been a solid strategy, plus it looks (slightly) less ridiculous than the ice-cream bucket hat with texta eyes approach.

Plus, magpies take care of their friends. When researchers attached GPS-tracking vests to five of the birds their mates swooped in to help them remove them. All of them were flying free on their personal, private business within three days.

If you treat magpies with the respect they deserve as the bird mafia of the neighbourhood, chances are they’ll take you under their wing and offer you protection.

I’m not sure what from but if it’s bad enough to scare my friends in the black-and-white suits, I don’t want anything to do with it.

Original Article published by Zoe Cartwright on Region Illawarra.