14YOS has been in a morose mood over the last couple of weeks, thanks to magpies.
For those of you who don't know, Australian magpies are named for their rough similarity in appearance to European magpies. Like the European birds, Australian magpies are intelligent and social animals with complex vocalisations. They're highly territorial, live in small family groups, and are well adapted to living in the suburbs. We have a magpie family which includes our yard in their foraging territory; in summer we leave water out for them, and they like to sun themselves in the privacy of our yard (and we feed them very occasionally). One of the endearing characteristics of Australian magpies is the way juvenile birds follow their parents as they forage, loudly begging to be fed with a call that sounds like "Hey? Hey? Hey? Hey?", until the nearest parent stuffs food into their mouths...whereupon the begging restarts.
Come the end of the school year, and 14YOS has won a couple of academic achievement awards. My wife and I attended the assembly where they were presented. But 14YOS was feeling down because one of the magpies living on school grounds had been injured, and he'd had to call the local wildlife rescue groups to help it.
Then, a week or so later, on the last day of school for the year, you'd think 14YOS would be celebrating? No, he'd had to call the wildlife rescue people again; one of the mapgies had got its legs tangled in a length of string and couldn't free itself.
Then, the day before (now) 12YOD's birthday, 14YOS noticed one of the juvenile magpies of "our" family caught by one leg between the palings of our boundary fence. We called the wildlife rescue people, but they were too busy to help. 14YOS was almost beside himself watching the poor bird as it alternated between helplessly flapping its wings to free itself and hanging there exhausted. In the end he and I had a go at rescuing it, and I'm proud to say we were able to free it and take it to the local vet for treatment of its leg.
Happy days, you might have thought; we'd rescued the injured bird? But no, not the way 14YOS saw it. The wildlife rescue people told us that if the vet could save the animal they'd rehabilitate it and release it, but probably not with its old family. As they explained, the juveniles were close to the age where their parents would forcibly wean their kids by expelling them from their territory. So poor old 14YOS was distracted from the prospect of enjoying his little sister's birthday by dwelling on the fact that we'd helped break up "our" magpie family...
