Tue 9 Sep 2008
The Sound of Lunch
Posted by anaglyph under Australiana, Ephemera, Science, Sound
[13] Comments
I did end up mowing the lawn yesterday (well, you have to fill in your time somehow until the world ends…) About halfway through, in the midst of the hideous racket that is the sound of a petrol-driven set of rotating blades shearing through vegetation, a magpie turned up and settled down on the clothesline, apparently oblivious to all the noise. I was amazed that it didn’t seem at all fearful of what I would have assumed was a pretty confronting spectacle for a bird.
But birds are smart.* This little guy† has evidently learned that the sound of a lawnmower means the opportunity for an easy meal. Sure enough, after I’d finished, he hopped down off his perch and helped himself to the bugs and snails that had been disturbed by the mowing.
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*Some people don’t think so. We can only assume it’s because they feel their intelligence is threatened by superior bird brains.
†Or gal. Bit hard to tell with magpies.
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Looks like a snail-bug-and-magpie salad waitin t happn.
I have the same thing with barn swallows. They swoop all around me when I am mowing because they are gobbling up the bugs I stir up.
They come frighteningly close sometimes.
The sound of lunch to our magpies is the sound of the catfood can opening.
They hop around dementedly on the back fence until the cat has finished then swoop in to clean his bowl.
Nice photo, btw.
Birds are always smarter than us.
Always have been, always will be. Do they shovel snow? pay taxes?
Enuff said.
Easy meal of diced Magpie!
all I see if fresh blood for ‘the spawn’
Joey: Only Atlas would go for the trifecta.
Mike: Do your swallows have an Italian accent when they come back from Capistrano each year?
Pil: Mmmmm. Catfood.
Colonel: And they can fly. Now there’s proof that God has it in for us.
Malach: See comment to Joey, above.
din: Well, it’s not that he didn’t show some interest. Lack of wings has defeated him thus far.
I love black birds. Actually next tattoo is going to be a handful of ravens flying around on my shoulder. Looking forward to that. Yup, they are smart.
Magpies aren’t entirely black though – they have white markings. But they also have a beautiful song. And can be quite fierce when nesting – I’ve been knocked off my bike by one.
From what I’ve read, magpies also have an affinity for shiny objects, and will steal jewelry to take to their nests. I wanted to work a magpie into the mystery novel I’m roughing out, but NC isn’t a favorite haunt of theirs, so I changed the bird to a Fish Crow with my literary wand and had it grab a piece of evidence from the case.
Birds are so cool.
Nice fake DOF!
Magpies (the Australian kind are definitely smart, and can be very friendly.) I’m not so keen on the Northern Hemisphere variety, which sound like crap, and are very shy, from everything I’ve seen.
There was an old man who used to pay us boys a quarter for every dead magpie we brought him. We thought he was creepy as hell, but for four magpies, we could go see the second run movies.
turns out, he just wanted the population brought down because of his orchard.