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| | (_)| |_ | |_ | |(_)) ((/ __|((_)_ _((_)) ((_)_\ / __| (_)| |_ (_))
| |__ | || _|| _| | |/ -_) | (__ / _` || ' \()| '_ \) \__ \ | || _|/ -_)
|____||_| \__| \__| |_|\___| \___|\__,_||_|_|_| | .__/ |___/ |_| \__|\___|
|_|
There's a family band of magpies that keep me noisy company at my desk in the morning. As I'm back and forth from my desk as I deal with other responsibilities, they are there out of the window, calling to each other and letting me know at the same time where they are.
I like magpies; I like all corvids in fact, fiercely intelligent birds with complex social structures and interactions, which I personally had the experience of seeing at first hand one day as a group of magpies meted out a "punishment beating" to one of their own, some pinning a bird down and others pecking. I've often wondered what transgression was being punished.
Magpies are commonly disliked birds, unfairly maligned and blamed for a host of ills, including the declines of other birds. Its not true, of course, magpies have always raided nests but they are declining alongside other birds too. They're a convenient scapegoat for the imagination and compassion challenged who choose not to acknowledge a human cause for any environmental degradation.
All corvids have loud calls and be it the chatter of jackdaws or the rumble of ravens, they have things to say, including about us. Analysis of their calls demonstrates that they are communicating with each other and when observed by humans and they see that they do indeed talk about us. They know who is a good source of food and who is an arse and they're happy to discuss.
Magpies are so much more than noisy black and white birds; for a start they're not actually black and white. Stop and look at a magpie and you can soon see the iridescent blues and shimmering greens in their feathers as they refract the light. The different colours even have a purpose, the beta-keratin in darker feathers being more resilient to keratinolytic fungi so they have to be replaced less often than white feathers do. Its why the dark feathers are doing all the major work on magpies of getting them aloft, keeping them there and steering them.
I really appreciate the band of five that I've been spending time with. Five for silver, goes the rhyme, and that suits me the better, I've always preferred silver to gold. I don't even see them as noisy as they chatter, often right outside the open window. A human made sound, be it car, construction or clipping, will jar and imbalance me, but not the magpie calls. That probably says a great deal more about me than about them, preferring silver to gold, preferring natural sounds to man made ones.
Long may this band play on.
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maz [at] littlecamp [dot] site
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